How humour stimulates critical thinking, creativity and communication skills
After assigning students to write comedy scripts instead of seminar papers, André Martinuzzi and Angelo Spoerk explain how humour has great potential as a learning method
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When educators integrate humour in the classroom or course materials, they can create a positive learning atmosphere, strengthen class cohesion, improve student-educator relationships and intensify the effects of learning.
In most cases, however, humour is used by educators, with students acting as consumers. Whereas, to exploit its full learning potential, we have applied humour as an experience-based learning method, developed a toolbox based on principles of comedy writing and supported students in developing their own punchlines and comedy scripts.
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My colleague Angelo Spoerk and I assigned students to write comedy scripts instead of seminar papers and assessed the impacts of this experience-based learning method on students’ attitudes, behaviour and skills. Our humour toolbox can be used in single lessons, with students creating short videos, or serve as the basis of whole courses, in which students develop comedy scripts and shows on serious and complex topics.
We found three key components of high importance that helped uncover useful elements of using humour for teaching and learning: understanding the basics of humour, empowering students to develop their own humorous texts and guiding them to achieve high-quality results.
1. Understanding the basics of humour is an important starting point
Humour needs surprise: A surprising punchline can be developed through specific techniques, such as exaggerations, a twist in a line of argumentation or an unexpected link between two associations. Therefore, when using humour as a learning method, it is important that students do not collect jokes or memes but instead develop punchlines themselves.
Humour conveys new insights: A punchline can be revealing, unexpected or exaggerated, but it should contain a message or the realisation of a deeper truth. Hence, creating humour requires knowledge and also can foster a deeper understanding of the respective topic.
Humour comes from knowledge: A requirement for effective parody is that the audience is familiar with the parodied subject. Therefore, punchlines often refer to pop culture, world politics or stereotypes, although such references risk being oversimplified or reinforcing prejudice. The use of irony or cynicism is risky and must be understood to avoid misleading messages.
2. Empowerment is key for humour as a learning method
Humour is a craft rather than a talent: It is essential students realise that humour, as with any craft, requires practice and time. Thus, it is not enough to simply ask students to be humorous or to assign tasks; they should be trained in humour with well-designed exercises that build on each other and are supported by constructive feedback.
Producing humour in a playful atmosphere: It is important to abandon inner censors, suspend value judgements, lower expectations and allow creativity to flow. Therefore, it is essential to concentrate on the process and not on the result.
Humour requires self-confidence: It is important that exercises are presented as an invitation and not an obligation to prevent stressing introverted or shy people. Positive feedback from the educator is key. The educator should also be mindful of appreciative feedback from other students.
3. Guidance is a prerequisite for producing high-quality results
Humour is criticism presented as entertainment: People enjoy laughing together about something or someone (but rarely about themselves), and they experience a feeling of group cohesion and superiority. Therefore, it should always be clear what or who the target is and why it deserves to be attacked.
Humour can be provocative and embarrassing: On the one hand, provocative humour is often effective because it plays with the permission to misbehave. On the other hand, it can be seen as inappropriate and politically incorrect. The boundaries demarcating the permissibility of content are determined by the audience, the context and the culture.
Humour requires reflexivity: Although during comedy writing, the principle of “nothing sucks” is followed, several screenings and rehearsals guide students towards an appropriate form of humour without counteracting empowerment.
It is important to consider that our method is not based on a predefined solution but aims to arrive at novel insights through gags and punchlines. Therefore, our students did not find the “right” answers or solve a case, but instead they developed something new.
Based on our toolbox, students developed comedy scripts on complex scientific themes, while we assessed the effects of humour as a learning method. The results of our study demonstrate that humour empowers students, boosts their creativity, fosters critical thinking, improves their communication skills and helps them become agents of change.
Particularly when addressing sustainability issues, humour can help students cope with unpleasant feelings and enables them to engage with individuals who otherwise would not be interested. As a result, we believe that humour possesses significant potential as a learning method, especially in courses or programmes where skills, group dynamics, creativity and emotions play crucial roles, as well as in topics that require innovative and creative approaches.
André Martinuzzi is founder and director of the Institute for Managing Sustainability at Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria.
Angelo Spoerk is a former radio moderator and is writing his PhD thesis on humour as a learning method at Vienna University of Economics and Business.
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