Purpose: This study explores how virtual learners perceive the use of humor in instructor-developed videos and their other factors for learning effectiveness in an online course. Design/methodology/approach: The study adopted a set of qualitative methods flowing from lesson study, to pilot study, to self-declaration of a learning style, to…

This research aims to analyze Mark Zuckerberg's Commencement Speech at Harvard University to explore its wording and the interaction between the speaker and the audience. A Multimodal Discourse Analysis approach (MDA), and the concepts of intertextuality and interdiscursivity were adopted in this study. The results show that intertextually, Mark…

For decades, the number of students enrolling in online courses has been increasing, and this trend toward online education has been further intensified as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The completion rate of online courses is not as high as in-person instruction, and researchers and practitioners have long been invested in identifying ways…

Based on interaction recorded in EFL classrooms, this study uses Conversation Analysis to document the post-first deployment of an absurd candidate formulation (ACF) to pursue recipient response at points of interactional delay. ACFs are a form of correction-invitation device in which the question initiator proffers a candidate response that is…

Courses: Critically fun is a single-class activity for communication classes discussing persuasive messages, the effects of mass media, or rhetorical analysis (e.g. public speaking, communication theory, mass media, and rhetoric). Objectives: By the end of the activity, students should be able to analyze critically the rhetorical significance of…

Purpose: In this paper, the authors engage with embodied critical literacies through an exploration of the possibilities provided by the use of improvisational comedy (improv) in the classroom. The purpose of this paper is to extend understandings of critical literacy to consider how embodied critical literacy may be transformative for both…

This article describes a narrative study exploring the challenges that international teaching assistants (ITAs) encounter when using humor in North American university classrooms. Twenty participants were recruited from twelve teaching fields. Each ITA participated in two interviews and a videotaped teaching observation. The participants talked…

While humour and laughter create conditions that are conducive for learning, different forms of children's humour have been given little attention in research on digital media, literacy learning, and multimodal design. Applying a Bakhtinian lens, we analyse carnivalesque videos created by elementary students as part of the formal curriculum. We…

The blending of entertainment and education is often used as a mechanism for communicating science to the general public. Key to dissemination of scientific information is cognitive engagement of the audience with the content. The authors describe a study investigating the relationship between entertaining videos and cognitive engagement of the…

With the recent shift from negative psychology to positive psychology in the field of second language acquisition deeper understanding regarding the transfer and construction of positive emotions within classroom interactions is needed. Inspired by the concept of emotion contagion in the field of psychology, the purpose of this study was to…

In this article we investigate data from digital interactions between native speaker (NS) and non-native speaker (NNS) dyads of English during synchronous computer mediated communication. As opposed to most studies into the NS-NNS interface, we reversed the expert-learner participant roles: during the task performance, the NS was the (cultural)…

This article shares the motivation, process, and outcomes of using humorous scenes from television comedies to teach the real world of tax practice. The article advances the literature by reviewing the use of video clips in a previously unexplored discipline, discussing the process of identifying and selecting appropriate clips, and introducing…

Although research on second language (L2) humor and language play is burgeoning, most previous studies have addressed language learners. Thus, L2 teachers in general and EFL teachers in particular have comparatively received much less attention in the literature. The present research, to my knowledge, is the first study in the Iranian context and…

Teaching and learning research typically focuses on learning outcomes relating to the acquisition of knowledge. In this article, we shift focus to a different outcome: student commitment to, and thus successful completion of, a course. By examining the relationship between instructor pedagogical choices and rates of student retention--as measured…

Aims: The use of fear appeals with disgusting graphical content is part of current practice in health campaigns. Previous studies have suggested both a detrimental and a beneficial effect of disgust in fear appeals on different types of outcome measures. We were interested in whether disgust in anti-smoking messages decreases or increases…