Online learning burnout poses a paramount concern due to its detrimental influence on students' academic cognitive learning and mental health. Aiming to explore the association between teacher humour (content-related and content-unrelated) and online learning burnout, this study surveyed 585 college students enrolled in various online courses. The…

In most higher education institutions, course evaluations are conducted at the end of the term. While many instructors implement a feedback system such as a questionnaire or poll at the midterm point, we propose that having students use an arts-based representation (i.e. memes) for a feedback channel can help students and the course instructor to…

The rise of memes has transformed the way people communicate and share information online, presenting a unique opportunity to leverage technology in the service of education. We explore the potential of memes as an educational tool for supporting STEM education and increasing student engagement. We aim to provide a theoretical framework for using…

This study examines the effect of a teacher's sense of humor on the academic achievement of university students. A total of 180 university students, 90 from arts and 90 from science, were asked to rate their teacher's sense of humor in the classroom. An investigator measures the effect of teachers' sense of humor on their academic achievement.…

The word humor can be defined as something which is perceived to be funny, comical, or amusing. However, in the case of humor perception plays a key role. This is mainly because what is regarded as humorous by one person may not be funny to another person. Hence, humor like beauty lies in the eyes (ears) of the beholder. The potential of humor as…

Effective teaching behaviours of instructors significantly facilitate students' learning and development. This study surveyed 3493 college students in advanced mathematics classrooms across three Chinese universities. A multilevel mediation model examined the relevance of instructional clarity and teacher humour to academic engagement. The results…

Games in the classroom is not a new concept. Simulations, board games, and online games are popular methods of incorporating game-based learning or gamification into the classroom. However, newer and more humor-based games popular with student populations, such as Cards Against Humanity, a popular card-based party game, have produced some…

Teacher-student rapport has been discussed in previous research, but the communicative behaviors that foster it have yet to be identified. The current study looked at several teacher communicative behaviors to determine which are the best predictors of rapport building. The results suggest that students feel rapport is most influenced by a…

We investigated the effect of culture and social status on sarcasm interpretation. Two hundred U.K. participants and 200 Chinese participants read scenarios in which the final comment could be either literal or sarcastic criticism and the speaker had equal, higher, or lower social status compared to the recipient. Comments were rated on degree of…

The current study investigates how foreign language enjoyment (FLE), foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA) and attitude/motivation (AM) of 360 learners of English, German, French and Spanish in a Kuwaiti university was shaped over the course of one semester by three teacher behaviours: frequency of using the foreign language (FL) in class,…

This article aims to expand our knowledge on interdisciplinary design education by focusing on team development, which has remained a less explored aspect of interdisciplinary collaboration so far. An interdisciplinary design studio course, Collaborative Design, for food engineering and industrial design students in higher education provides the…

Recently there has been an increase in scientists, educators, and activists moving into comedy to tell the climate story. Could using humour as an educational method encourage a greater response to the climate crisis? The present research addresses this question by exploring the impact that an environmental-based comedy show had on various…

Existing literature on using humor in teaching identifies several social and pedagogical benefits, ranging from making students feel more comfortable and interested in the subject matter to facilitating a critical pedagogy approach. However, there are several risks associated with humor attempts that are detrimental to learning and to student…

Through the lens of conversational analysis (CA), humor or funniness is not an inherent property of a message, nor an internal state of any social action, but as something interactionally achieved (Glenn, 2003). Teachers are often encouraged to utilize humor to reduce anxiety, lower affective filters, and make language more "memorable"…

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected deep reflection in higher education classrooms: how do we attract and retain students to (temporary but nevertheless increasing) online learning experiences, how do we keep them at our universities and colleges, and how do we give students a learning experience from which they will remember meaningful…