The effect of humor on retention of lecture material was studied with 100 undergraduate students at California State University, Dominguez Hills. Within each class, students were divided into four equal groups, and four versions of a lecture on language development were presented on videotape by a college faculty member. The lectures were…

It was hypothesized that a visual strategy that incorporates a humorous theme and cartoons with humorous comments relevant to the content helps motivate students to focus on and retain computer-based instructional material. An experiment to assess this hypothesis was undertaken with 43 college students who received a humorous presentation on…