CHAPARRAL

Enhancing Student Motivation and Competence through Humor
by Michael Harnett, English Division

Theory: All students are intrinsically motivated to learn. Yet students report that instruction tends to be banal from their point of view (See Community College Survey of Student Engagement, 2009—Executive Summary at http://www.ccsse.org/publications/national_report_2009/CCSSE09_execsum.pdf). It appears that although we often teach with an emphasis on skills, focusing on skills alone does not reliably bring about the best results, as the Intersegmental Committee of the Academic Senates (ICAS) concluded about “academic literacy” in 2002 (see “Executive Summary: Academic Literacy: A Statement of Competencies,” at http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/senate/reports/acadlit.pdf). ICAS’s statement clearly links motivation or “habits of mind” to competence: “The habits of mind expected of students—their curiosity, their daring, their participation in intellectual discussions—are predicated upon their ability to convey their ideas clearly and to listen and respond to divergent views respectfully.” So how about focusing on will before skill, to bring student engagement and curiosity to the fore?

One way to promote these “habits of mind” and student engagement is the use of humor in classroom activities—that is, activities that elicit smiles, laughter, or internal reactions of amusement from students.  Humor bears striking and well-documented similarities to curiosity, in fact, since both humor and curiosity present incongruities in a way that powerfully draws a person to seek resolution and understanding. We satisfy our curiosity when we figure out a problem; we laugh when we understand the violation of normal conditions as a pleasant anomaly. Think of Peek-a-Boo: When you hide, you violate normal conditions; when you then show yourself, a toddler figures out that all is well and laughs—he or she has resolved the incongruity in an enjoyable way. While the humor may relate directly to the subject matter at hand (endogenous humor) or not (exogenous humor), my research suggests that endogenous humor activities are more effective for student motivation. As a result, these engaged and motivated students should develop skills and have successful learning outcomes.

Practice
You can systematically plan to enhance student motivation to learn in your classes through prepared humor activities. One advantage of such planned activities is that the students themselves actively derive the humor response, and the desired learning, from engaging in the activity; the instructor does not have to be the source of humor like a standup comic. Instead, you can promote active learning simply by handing out and introducing a task for students to accomplish.

To that end, consider the following elements of endogenous humor activities that you can run in the classroom:

• Enjoyable incongruity

• Directly related to assignment or course topic

• Small-group setting

• Activity on handout or announced

• Oral or kinesthetic components as well as written

     The first element, enjoyable incongruity, is crucial to your activity’s success. The fact that the activity is endogenous promotes ideas that the activity is relevant to students’ learning and success in the course. Placing students in groups of three or four and allocating responsibility to each person increases the likelihood of student participation. Having a well-delineated handout or presentation of the assignment gives everyone a clear sense of the challenges and goals as well as the procedures of the activity. Also, involving multiple modes of learning, such as oral discussions or scenario enactments and activities that involve physical movement, can literally get students up and active in the learning of the moment. 

Using Humor in Classes

Even Juan laughed then. Everyone laughed. And suddenly the bus was not full of strangers. Some chemical association was formed. Norma laughed hysterically. All the tension of the morning came out in her laughter.

—John Steinbeck, The Wayward Bus

     As examples, here are some prompts for endogenous humor activities in an English 101 class. Together, I hope that they show how you can apply the elements of humorous activities and enhance student engagement. Since motivation applies to all human endeavors, you can develop activities that enhance motivation and competence across the disciplines. All of these activities were run in classes by various instructors here at GCC, and they all rely on readings that were already completed in preparation for a writing assignment.

1. You are familiar with the benefits and problems of technology from our readings. Others have proposed brain-detectors for teachers to check homework, and in-car monitors for parents to supervise their sons’ and daughters’ away-from-home activities. Other than these, propose an invention that would use technology of your imagination for a clear purpose at school and/or at home. Describe how the invention would work as clearly as possible. Then explain some key issues involved with it: for example, who would be happy to see such an invention, and who wouldn’t like it? What are the best and worst possible things that could happen with it? What else do people need to know about it?

2. “A Modest Proposal for __________”: In 1729, Jonathan Swift (author of Gulliver’s Travels) jokingly proposed that the hunger problem could be solved by eating infants (boiled, roasted, etc.). He noted that this would also reduce overpopulation and aid the economy. Now write your own “modest proposal” to help solve the problem of ____________. Make a list of PROPOSED ACTIONS and REASONS that are at least as absurd, yet as logical, as Swift’s idea is.

3. Reading: “The Ultimate College Application Essay” (see http://paws.kettering.edu/~jhuggins/humor/essay.html)

Assignment: Write your own “Ultimate College Application Essay.”

          These activities feature enjoyable incongruities that lead students to address the topics in relatively sophisticated ways. Students engage in analysis and argument, which are fundamental learning outcomes in English 101. The activities have students play with absurdity within a logical framework, such as an improbable invention or an immoral solution to hunger.  “The Ultimate College Application Essay” activity features the use of outlandish exaggerations to lampoon the way most application essays are written. Apparently, an actual student named Hugh Gallagher wrote the essay shown on the link listed above and was accepted to New York University in the early 1990s. For example, Gallagher writes,

I woo women with my sensuous and god-like trombone playing. I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in 20 minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love and an outlaw in Peru […] I have spoken with Elvis. But I have not yet gone to college.

     In all that I have argued and described above, I mean to suggest that if students smile or laugh as they do their work on an activity in class, they are likely to be more motivated, and perhaps more competent, than they otherwise would have been. There are so many other ways to use humor for useful educational purposes, and there are even more ways to motivate optimal learning among students, which we all must continue to seek. I invite you to deepen what you already do—use humor to enhance the classroom environment—more to its full potential in your courses across the curriculum as we carry out our mission for our students. &

Selected References

Berlyne, D. E. (1960). Conflict, arousal, and curiosity. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper Perennial, 1990.

Harnett, M. C. (2007). Humor as an enhancement of writing motivation and competence. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Kashdan, T. B., Rose, P., & Fincham, F. D. (2004). Curiosity and exploration: Facilitating positive subjective experiences and personal growth opportunities. Journal of personality assessment, 82 (3), 291–305.

Malone, T. W., & Lepper, M. R. (1987). Intrinsic motivation and instructional effectiveness in computer-based education. In Snow, R. E., & Farr, M. J. (Eds.), Conative and affective process analyses (pp. 255-286). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Veatch, T. (1999, July 15). Humor is affective absurdity. A theory of humor. Retrieved February 17, 2010, from http://www.tomveatch.com/else/humor/paper/node2.html

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