| Abstrakt: |
The educational use of humour, when it is used during live teaching, appears to be mainly that of maintaining attention and improving audience attitude. It may be unplanned, opportunist and driven by events, or consciously worked into a presentation, lecture or demonstration, nevertheless the quality, pertinence and effectiveness of the humour is very much due to the individual's sense of humour, timing and sensibilities. Some teacher's views on humour are that it is in some way divorced from learning (which is a properly serious thing) and only useful to alleviate boredom and stress. A typical response might run as follows: 1. Humour is flippant, deconstructive and diverts from the true path of knowledge, 2. If this paper is about humour then it is going to be terribly dull, 3. OK then, make me laugh. This current research, which is at an early stage, is concerned with applications of textual and illustrative humour in teaching materials for 18-22 year old undergraduate students. It will consider the possibility that humour can positively contribute to understanding, creativity and learning, and whether an application model can be constructed to help teachers, authors and learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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