We were asked to come up with the best and worst examples of
lecturing, either our own or those we’ve attended. Clearly my lectures are
textbook examples of tertiary content delivery and probably deserve prizes
(worth a try). So I thought back to when I was the recipient of lectures (a
long time ago). But since I went to a research focussed university in the mid
90’s where teaching was at best seen as a chore, the quality was fairly
universally m’eh. There was, however, one standout lecturer who I still remember,
and not because of the content, something to do with action potentials in nerve
cells (holy moly I remembered something), but because of his delivery style.
Each lecture had a carefully crafted hilarious diversion (normally about
walking in the Alps). This in turn got me thinking about using humour in
lectures, which I try, and sometimes succeed, to do. Here are some tips:
1.
Simple is best. You don’t need to be Jonathan
Swift to get a laugh out of 200 bored undergrads. To be honest, most of the
jokes I use work as well with primary school audiences as they do with
postgraduates (particularly my carefully curated library of pictures of snot). My
most successful joke uses the power of slide animation to transform “B for
boring cells” into “B for brilliant cells”, this even gets applause! But
beware, jokes, if they work, disrupt the flow and it can take a couple of
minutes to settle the room afterwards.
2.
Context is important. Students are not necessarily
expecting humour and so may not process it as such. When, in a fit of pique, I
told one cohort that their dissertations needed to be handwritten and have the first
letter illustrated by monks, the course organiser had a busy afternoon
reassuring them that this wasn’t the case.
3.
Be culturally aware. Most jokes work because of
some common ground, knowledge or experience; which the students may not have in
common with you. Age in particular is a big barrier. I started working at
Imperial before most of the current students were born, so my references to pop
culture often draw blank looks. I once told a PhD student that “I love it when
a plan comes together” and they looked confused, apparently unaware of the
wisdom of Colonel John “Hannibal” Smith.
4.
Visual jokes work, but can take time. I love
cartoons and have tried to use them from a range of sources (Piled higher and
deeper, sketching science and @redpenblackpen all being favourites). But cartoons
take time to read - don’t just flash them up and expect instant gratification.
Memes work better: since they come with a preloaded meaning, they tick the
shared common ground box. They can even be educational – if Boromir is saying
it, it must be true.
5.
Align with teaching. One does not simply throw
in a joke and expect it to work: you need to link the joke to the content. Humour
can be memorable, but it can divert memory away from what you are trying to
teach. This is why 20 years later I can remember my physiology lecturer but not
my physiology lectures. I managed perfect joke-content alignment once, by tenuously
linking UKIP, Brexit and the EU to T cell immunology. 3 years later, the students
came up and said they remembered my lecture from the first year – both the joke
and the concept.
On the whole, humour is a useful tool, but there needs to be
a thread, however unlikely between the learning objectives and the laughter.
This article first appeared in Times Higher Education
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