I do stand-up, not burlesque

Remember my patron saint: Lionel Basney (RIP)? Basney said...The basic equipment for a classroon teacher is the same as for a stand-up comedian: a striking voice, a direct gaze, and the inner freedom to say more or less anything that comes to mind.... Below is an account of a professor doing a clown act, perhaps burlesque, but it sure as hell ain't stand-up.

[x CHE—July 25, 2003]


Did You Hear the One About the Professor? How one statistician learned to use humor in the classroom and is now teaching others how to do it

By THOMAS BARTLETT


Baltimore

It's easy to make fun of Ronald A. Berk. And, to be fair, anyone who wears oversized cowboy hats and has more than one inflatable alien doll in his office should be prepared for some ridicule.

So go ahead, laugh at him. Really. It's OK. He wants you to.

After all, everyone else does, including his students. The 56-year-old professor of biostatistics and measurement at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing has become well-known for his wacky classroom stunts, one of which involves a touching duet between Céline Dion and a leaf blower.

In person, Mr. Berk always has a joke at hand. Although many of them are groaners, he seems to be having such a good time that it is hard not to get caught up in his enthusiasm.

But beneath the nonsense is a simple and slightly subversive message: If you're funny, they will learn.

The professor has written two books in support of that theory: Professors Are From Mars, Students Are From Snickers and the recently published Humor as an Instructional Defibrillator. He has made presentations to packed rooms of professors across the country, maintaining that humor not only reduces anxiety and fosters better relationships between students and teachers but also helps make difficult concepts clearer and more memorable.

Indeed, Mr. Berk has become higher education's humor guru, a title for which, admittedly, there wasn't much competition. Along the way, he has racked up a shelf full of teaching awards, a cadre of wisecracking disciples, and stacks of gushing student evaluations.

"He's more than funny," says Sherri Wheeler, a senior majoring in nursing. "He knows how to take a subject and truly bring it to life."

Most professors use some form of humor in their courses, tossing in the occasional wry one-liner or witty aside. What Mr. Berk advocates is employing humor as a systematic teaching tool that, he says, can "shock students to attention and bring deadly, boring course content to life." It can also, according to the professor, create an "atmosphere of play and creativity" that encourages exploration.

That's not to say that everyone agrees that humor, particularly the over-the-top variety, is the right approach. "Some students seem to like it, but there are others who find it annoying and distracting and unnecessary," says Martha N. Hill, dean of the nursing school.

Still, Mr. Berk and teaching experts like Jim Eison remain convinced of humor's pedagogical value. "Instructors don't necessarily have to be entertainers, but humor is one way to make material more compelling and engage students in the learning experience," says Mr. Eison, a professor of higher education at the University of South Florida.

The Scarf and the Leaf Blower

It started innocently enough. Then it got out of hand.

Ever since Mr. Berk began teaching in the nursing school, some 17 years ago, he has made sure to add a few jokey examples to his lectures. Not comedic gold exactly, just a play on words or a pop-culture reference or two.

The students seemed to pay closer attention. "They were smiling and laughing," he says. "No one would believe we were talking about multiple regression."

Soon he had gone beyond funny test questions and was devising elaborate musical skits to illustrate certain principles, often enlisting the help of his students. In one, several students danced into the room to music from Chicago, followed by another group wearing hooded sweatshirts and punching the air to the theme from Rocky. They were meant to illustrate the concept of statistical sampling. (The class discussed how certain students were selected for the two groups and in what ways those groups were similar or different.)

In another stunt, he had a student stand at the front of the room with her arms out straight, so her body was in the shape of a "T," to represent a statistical concept called "T score." To make the demonstration more memorable, he had her hold a scarf in her hand while another student turned on a leaf blower and he played the Céline Dion tear-jerker "My Heart Will Go On" from the movie Titanic. (For the two of you who didn't see the movie, this is a play on one of its most famous scenes.)

"They loved it," the professor says. "The room exploded."

Not only did they love it, but such antics have helped students remember the material better, the professor contends. Attendance improved and test scores rose, he says. "The response reinforced my idea of using humor as a teaching tool," adds Mr. Berk, who received his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland at College Park in education.

Along the way, Mr. Berk developed some rules about the right and wrong kinds of humor to use in a classroom. For instance, he found that self-deprecating humor puts students at ease and leads to more interaction. Sarcasm, however, can poison a classroom and turn students off.

Barry Margulies learned that the hard way. The assistant professor of biology at Towson University says his own sense of humor tends to be a bit acerbic. He didn't think that was a problem until he started receiving evaluations from students with comments like "inappropriate humor" and "sarcastic."

So he asked Mr. Berk, whom he heard speak at a teaching conference, for help. Mr. Berk encouraged him to eliminate the sarcasm -- which might be misinterpreted as a put-down -- and replace it with less biting goofiness. It seems to have worked: Mr. Margulies's last batch of student evaluations was much more positive, he says. And Mr. Berk's humor techniques have been a hit with Mr. Margulies's students. "If they can remember me acting like an idiot, maybe that will trigger a memory that will allow them to solve a problem or answer a question," he says. "Sometimes the most hilarious or off-the-wall presentations make the biggest impressions."

But is it acceptable for a professor to act like an idiot? Mr. Berk argues that it is, so long as doing so helps students learn. But not everyone agrees. "There are people who think that it's frivolous, it's undignified," he says. "They don't understand that it's not the humor by itself, but it's the humor linked to certain concepts that I want students to remember. It's about active learning."

Screwy Syllabus

Mr. Berk's philosophy is also linked to current research about humor, which shows that laughter can reduce stress and improve mental functioning. But that connection, he says, is lost on colleagues who think of him as the guy who wears silly hats. He has even run into opposition from his own department.

One of those battles was over his use of humor in his syllabus. Quips such as "A Third Less Content, Same Great Taste!" sprinkled throughout the list of requirements and assignments were viewed by the nursing school as inappropriate for official university material. But putting small jokes and non sequiturs in official university material is what Mr. Berk is all about. Indeed, he encourages other professors to follow his lead and make their syllabuses as funny as possible. Being told that he would have to distribute a serious syllabus to his students was not something he took lightly.

He called the American Association of University Professors, which put him in touch with a lawyer. After much discussion, a compromise was reached: Mr. Berk would be allowed to distribute his original, funny syllabus to students so long as he provided a joke-free version to the department for its records. The professor happily complied.

While some colleagues remain skeptical, others, like Diane S. Aschenbrenner, an instructor in pharmacology, are big supporters. "He's a very effective, engaging teacher," she says. "I don't think people quite recognize the scholarship and learning theory that is behind what he does in the classroom." Ms. Aschenbrenner says that even though she is low key and serious by nature, she has used several of Mr. Berk's skits in her classes and has been pleased by the results.

That's why she was particularly upset when it was recently announced that Mr. Berk would no longer be assistant dean for teaching in the School of Nursing, though he will remain a professor. The official reason for the change is not Mr. Berk's performance in the role, but rather that the department is being reorganized under Ms. Hill, who was named dean last year.

Some in the department, however, suspect that Mr. Berk's humorous approach is not taken seriously by the new administration. "I think it's unfortunate not to have him in that position anymore," says Ms. Aschenbrenner. "I think he has helped a lot of other professors here with their teaching."

Whether what Mr. Berk does really helps students learn is a matter of debate, according to Ms. Hill. "I'm very interested in how we improve teaching excellence and increase competency-based learning," she says. "The question is, What are the effective techniques? I don't have any data that allow me to say what he does is effective."

She asserts that student evaluations reveal that not everyone is amused by Mr. Berk's technique. "The reviews are mixed," she says.

Mr. Berk disputes that and says evaluations from students have been almost uniformly stellar. "She doesn't have a clue about what goes on in my classroom," he says. "I don't think I've really had any negative reviews in two years." Mary Kathleen Lears, a nursing instructor who is also a member of a committee that examines students' evaluations, confirms that Mr. Berk's evaluations have been "superb" and among the highest in the department.

The professor says he has grown accustomed to negative reactions from colleagues. "The rest of the faculty dismiss or simply tolerate you," he says "People don't know why you do what you do, and they don't care." He adds that there is "hardly anyone else doing anything at the college level with humor as a teaching technique."

While they may be in the minority, there certainly are other professors who have found unconventional ways to help students learn. Among them is Muffy Siegel, a professor of English at Temple University, who also happens to be a ventriloquist. In her linguistics classes, she uses a puppet she's named Gregory the Grackle to explain the difference between human and animal communication, among other concepts. Ms. Siegel says students are disappointed on days when she doesn't make use of the talking bird.

"Sometimes it's hard to fit him in, but students demand it, and so I have to find a way," she says. "They say they look forward to coming to class -- and that's a good thing."

Ms. Siegel doesn't see her ventriloquism as a gimmick. "There's no better way to teach the course," she says. "There's no question to me that it's an effective teaching tool."

Anthony Clark Arend agrees that humor in the classroom can be effective. The professor of government at Georgetown University says including "colorful examples" is an integral part of the way he teaches. "In the hypotheticals, I'll talk about Snoop Doggy Dogg or Britney Spears," he says. "I try to keep it current.

Hopefully, by hearing something unconventional, students will participate more and perhaps enjoy what they're doing."

That said, Mr. Arend also believes humor shouldn't interfere with the lesson. "You need to use humor in such a way that it advances the substantive matter you're discussing," he says. "You never want to do it where it becomes paramount and the material becomes secondary."

What he does seems to work for students. He has won 10 teaching awards in his career, including three in the past year.

"He's hysterical," says Justin Wagner, a senior majoring in government and economics. "He personifies a professor who is able to incorporate humor and do it appropriately."

But just because the professor is funny doesn't mean his course is a cakewalk. Mr. Wagner says Mr. Arend's class is definitely challenging. Ms. Siegel says students feel they same way about her courses. "They uniformly say that the classes are funny, and they're hard," she says.

Milton M. Reigelman is known for being a tough teacher, too. But the English professor at Centre College is also known for using humor, and the occasional planned stunt, to grab students' attention. His favorite such event was the time he invited Ed McClanahan, author of the novel The Natural Man, to visit his class. The professor didn't tell the students that the author of the novel they were reading would be making an appearance. That would have ruined the gag.

The class was held outside, and halfway through the lecture Mr. McClanahan wandered up and began arguing with the professor over his interpretation of the book. The argument became increasingly more intense, until it looked as if the two men might come to blows. At that point, Mr. McClanahan revealed himself.

"You ask people who have graduated 20 years before what they remember, and it's stuff like that," Mr. Reigelman says. "You have to be a showman at some level. I think humor is absolutely fundamental to teaching."

Class for Clowns

If humor is fundamental to teaching, is it possible to teach professors to be funny?

Mr. Berk thinks so. While he doesn't guarantee that students will be rolling in the aisles, he does say that his "low risk" brand of humor can enliven any classroom. "It's not dependent on your ability to tell a joke," he says. "It's using humor in a very different way. Using music or putting jokes in your syllabus -- it's a no-brainer. Anybody can do this."

Bob McMorris, a professor of educational psychology and methodology at the State University of New York at Albany has tried some of Mr. Berk's techniques and says they're as good as advertised. "My outlook on humor has been colored a lot by Ron," he says. "He makes it accessible and gives people things they can use."

Ms. Lears has seen some of the techniques work in her classroom, too. She says she devised a skit to demonstrate how and how not to communicate with patients based on Mr. Berk's strategies. It was a smash, she says. "He has helped people here who you never would have thought would use humor in their classes," she adds.

She hopes Mr. Berk's methods will catch on. "If we can just get the rest of academia to understand that this is proven stuff, it works," she says. "It's OK to let your guard down and try something humorous."

SILLY SCHTICKS

Ronald A. Berk believes that being wacky in the classroom gets students' attention and helps them retain what they learn. Here are two of the humorous openings that he suggests could be used to kick off a lecture. They are from his book, Humor as an Instructional Defibrillator:

Stat Trek
a. Music: Theme from Star Trek
b. Time: 45 seconds
c. Props: Spock ears (optional), miniflashlight
d. Preparation: Conceal ears in pocket or under something near projector
e. Transparency: "Stat Trek: Where No Statistician Has Gone Before"
f. Script

Statistics
The final frontier
These are the voyages of the Stat Trek
Its 15-week mission:
To explore strange new statistics
To seek out new methods for conducting research
To boldly go where no statistician has gone before
g. Execution:
Test projector procedure
Turn out projector light
Place transparency on projector
Black out room
Put on ears
Use miniflashlight to find script and transparency
Read script
As you read last line, turn on projector light
Press button to begin music
After 30 seconds, turn off music
Turn on room lights
Launch into lecture

The Good, the Bad, and It Could Get Ugly
a. Music: Theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
b. Time: 30 seconds
c. Props: Humongous Western, big-brim hat, small cigar, poncho (optional)
d. Preparation: This demo can be used to introduce any topic where you plan on presenting a comparison of good and bad, pluses and minuses, advantages and disadvantages, strengths and weaknesses, or similar lists. Place props in a bag under the projector tables so they are easily accessible.
e. Transparency: "Experimental Design: The Good, the Bad, and It Could Get Ugly"
f. Execution:
Test projector procedure
Turn off projector light
Place transparency on projector with cover paper
Say, "I think we're ready to begin."
Bend under table with recorder in hand
Put on hat and put cigar in your mouth
Press button to begin music while under table
Stand up
Turn on projector light
Move paper down slowly on transparency to reveal one line at a time with the music
After the last line, stop the tape
Turn off projector light
Say, "This [morning, afternoon, evening] we're going to examine what's good and what's bad about [this topic]."

Copyright © 2003 by The Chronicle of Higher Education