Page 12 - Campus Technology, May/June 2018

ONLINE LEARNING
niques include goofy activities, oddball writing assignments and witty comments. Prodding students into a laugh proved to be a viable strategy and I was very successful at it. What really helped was reading the class’s body language: those subtle shifts in attitude where I could deliver one of my dry zingers, producing the desired jovial results.
Those experiences proved to me that humor was a dominat- ing factor when creating an interactive classroom. So, moving to the online format was a little disconcerting. Could humor achieve the same responses online as in real life? Well, I’ve come to find out the answer is, “Absolutely!”
SUBJECT: IF YOU MUST CHANGE A BADGER’S DIAPER, ALWAYS WEAR GLOVES.
The thing about working the online crowd, as with a face-to- face classroom, is that you don’t need to be a standup come- dian. Not everyone tells a good joke. What you need is a creative way of analyzing your students and providing the encouragement, mixed with a light-hearted delivery, to help them drop their guards and get involved. Here’s what I find creating such an environment accomplishes:
Comfort. Around the third day of teaching face-to-face, my students figured me out. They decided to let down their defenses and open up. I loved that transition. My class of independent learners became a community of learners. I
Students who are comfortable with their instructor are more willing to stay engaged, ask more questions and embrace the virtual community setting than those shaking at their keyboards.
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CAMPUS TECHNOLOGY | May/June 2018
see the same thing happening with my online students. After a phone conversation or a few e-mails, their formal tone is replaced with a willingness to banter, counter my humorous comments with their own, or include links to things like funny YouTube videos.
Motivation. Faculty who have been in the online trenches will tell you this is a big — maybe the biggest — obstacle for students working in a virtual environment. Dry and boring content delivery can extinguish even a blazing self-governing student. When levity is thrown into the mix, students perk up and take notice. I find they start looking forward to my next e-mails in anticipation of what goofy stuff I’ll offer up next.
SUBJECT: IF A PRIEST, DONKEY AND CHIPMUNK ENTER A BAR, DON’T USE THE RESTROOM.
Creativity. Well sure, why not? Mixing things up with ran- dom, off-the-wall comments shifts a student’s brain from the analytical to, “What the heck does a donkey have to do with it?” And it’s not a distraction. I always include pertinent, time-
ly material for my students. It just happens to be sandwiched between a few random thoughts. Brain scans point to enhanced activity when humor is used in instructional settings.
Personalization. Students in a brick-and-mortar setting are often intimidated by the “professor.” Now, place the instructor behind the Oz curtain of online uncertainty and the cowardly lion shines. Learn something unique about your students and then customize your responses to meet those individual characteristics. Students who are comfortable with their instructor are more willing to stay engaged, ask more questions and embrace the virtual community setting than those shaking at their keyboards.
So, those are the benefits I’m seeing but the obvious ques- tion is, “How do you do it?” You’ll need to come up with your own strategies, but here are a few of the things that I have found to be successful:
Engage. This, from the Latin words eng, meaning a bird of flight, and age, which refers to getting caught in a snare. The trick: how to get those flighty students caught in the content we teach? One technique I use is my e-mail sub- ject lines. Off the wall, yes. Totally random, yes. Highly