Humor can facilitate relationship-building and comfort in new experiences, essential elements for nature education programs prioritizing inclusive practices. This article presents insights on using humor in outdoor educational settings from a qualitative case study of an equity-driven nature education program. I present four key elements of…

Banter, a form of social communication, is perceived to enhance social cohesion between friends in online and offline contexts. A fine line between banter and bullying behaviours exists however, with some instances of banter perceived as bullying, cyberbullying, and relational aggression. Two qualitative studies explored university students'…

Purpose: Unlike formalist and functional approaches to literacy and teaching writing, a languaging theory approach centers on the dynamic and interpersonal nature of writing. The purpose of this study was to determine students' ability to engage in explicit reflection about their languaging actions in response to their personal narrative writing…

In this study university students interpersonal problem solving approaches were investigated in terms of solution focused approach and humor styles. The participants were 773 (542 female and 231 male, between 17-33 years old) university students. To determine the university students' problem solving approaches "Interpersonal Problem Solving…

Research has shown that students perceive their success, in even the most difficult courses, on their interactions and relationships with their instructors (Anderson, 2011; Micari & Pazos, 2012). In the online classroom, instructors run into an even greater challenge when it comes to engaging students, showing their personalities, and being…

The focus of this research is on an international distance discussion class carried out in Chinese between university students in Japan, China and Taiwan using videoconferencing. Smiling was used as an interactional index in an analysis of the archival footage of the recordings of the discussion between native speakers (NS) of Chinese and…

Over the past decade, there has been considerable attention given to college students' experience of pressure to pursue perfection through hyper-achievement and the psychological and emotional toll this process takes on them. The popular press has highlighted this phenomenon and raised specific questions about some of the related consequences like…

American Indian students who have attended tribal colleges have expressed gratitude, appreciation and pride in their educational and cultural experiences at these institutions. Most of the 37 tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) in the US and Canada currently offer two-year degree and certificate programs. Many American Indian students who wish…

Student attitudes toward having a relationship with a wheelchair user were explored. Participants initially selected one of six opposite gender head shots and subsequently viewed their selection's whole body photograph in a wheelchair along with reading a short biography. Primarily undergraduate Hispanic and Caucasian students (N = 810) were…

The current study is the fourth in a series on various components of advisor-advisee communication. In the latest study, the influence of a variety of communication variables on the graduate advisor-advisee interpersonal relationship is examined. Graduate students' perceptions of their graduate advisors' use of humor as it relates to other…

This study explores what classroom behaviors and activities in the basic speech course contribute to student connectedness. The results indicate that student encouragement, humor, honesty, interactive exercises and individual speeches, can help student bonding and motivation, and impacts their overall college experience.

This study investigated the humorous activity of two infants, 18 and 21 months old, in their infant group childcare setting. This was a qualitative study that followed two infants for four months. Through participant and non-participant observations, journal writing and interviews, data were collected on children's involvement in humorous…