Using Humor to Enhance Learning

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YEN-JIE LEE: Yeah, so I think a sense of humor is really a very, very good tool in the teaching. So I usually insert interesting figures in my slides. Then people will be really focusing on your slides and your lecture because people don't want to miss the joke. Right? And also, that makes the lecture much more enjoyable as well because everybody wants to learn things happily. Right?

And also, those jokes I insert, most of the time, they are relevant to physics interpretation of those jokes. So that's actually my idea to make the lecture much more enjoyable, and also keeping the students very focused on the material we cover.

So my idea is to have a much more relaxed classroom so that you can actually-- then people will feel that they can ask whatever question they have because I'm not, like, super serious, I mean, asking for everybody to keep quiet and cannot react to any funny things that I have been doing.

From here, actually, Maxwell see the light.

[LAUGHTER]

Can you see it? Maybe not yet. Maybe we are slightly slower than Maxwell. But-- but we will see that together in this lecture.

First of all, I will feel very relaxed because I can do whatever I want to help the students. And also, the students will feel that their stress of asking questions were greatly reduced if the instructor is actually very funny, and very, very humorous. So that's actually my idea, which drive me to the decision to insert a lot of interesting pictures and the jokes during the lecture.

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