Developing a Systematized Humour Pedagogical Approach to Enhance Teaching and Learning: A Cross-institutional and Cross-disciplinary Collaboration

COVID-19 is exerting tremendous stress on students globally, which affects students’ performance and presents a clear threat to education worldwide. One way to relieve students’ stress is by incorporating humour into teaching to create a more enjoyable learning environment. Humour relaxes students and helps with emotional venting. Humour is also known to be associated with positive emotions, which is known to enhance learning and memory via the stimulation of biogenic amine productions in the nervous system. Although humour is a common characteristic of many successful teachers, not every teacher is humourous, and not every humourous teacher has good student engagement. Furthermore, the outcomes of spontaneous humour are difficult to predict. Hence, we are developing a standardized humour pedagogical system – “Planned Humour Incorporation System for Teaching and Learning Enhancement” (PHISTLE) – manifested within the framework of the cognitivism learning theory, so that we can consistently generate positive outcomes that are predictable and replicable. Previously, we implemented PHISTLE in the field of biomedical sciences, and incorporated 17 different humour contents into the lectures of six courses at HKU to improve students’ learning experience. Our results indicated that the system promoted student engagement, enhanced learning, and relieved stress. In this project, we will expand the application of PHISTLE beyond the field of biomedical sciences and implement it in a cross-discipline manner among CUHK, CityU, HKBU, HKU and PolyU, which would apply PHISTLE in the fields of life sciences, language and corporate communication. To evaluate PHISTLE’s effectiveness, we will distribute questionnaires, conduct interviews and invite students to submit reflective journals. We expect PHISTLE to reduce stress, promote student-teacher rapport and social cohesion, and enhance students’ experiential learning experience across disciplines. The collected information will help us to further refine PHISTLE, formulate a teacher’s guide for appropriate usages of humour in teaching, create an online repository for sharing and searching of humour materials for teaching, and establish a community of practice among the participating universities.