Humor in eLearning

This is a news snippet from The Time of India on Wednesday, 10 January 2007. You can let your imagination run riot wondering what can happen to movies if further such moves are contemplated by the authorities. Might as well tell moviemakers to only make documentaries.

And what if a similar mindset starts permeating the world of writing? I can see science fiction, fantasy, and crime fiction coming under the scanner automatically. And in course of time, all fiction.

There are elements of this mindset that come up even in corporate eLearning development which, while sounding fair at times, tend to border on the restrictive. One such is the use of humor.

One of the arguments against humor is that it can be offensive to some segments of the learner population. But surely humor can be clean and unoffensive? And humor of the situational comedy variety can be an excellent vehicle to get across concepts like selling skills, people management, time management, and the like.

Another argument is that some segments of the target audience may not get it. This is just plain laziness. If you take the trouble to define your target audience clearly at the design stage, surely you can get a sense on what kind of humor will work for them? Of course, you may be working on some programs that cut across a very diverse audience, and in such cases not using humor is perhaps justified.

There is a school of thought that argues that humor detracts from the learning focus. Well, I can argue that most tools of engagement tend to do that; but without that engagement, your learner is not going to be at his learning desk any way.

Humor is certainly not easy, but it is just as effective a tool for learner engagement, immersion, and motivation as games, simulations, stories, animations, and the like.