Welcome Message
I would like to begin by recognizing everyone’s continuous contributions and perseverance. Despite obstacles, we have seen encouraging progress and achievements in the School in the past few months. There are new papers got accepted, research seminars, knowledge exchange activities, teaching-related events, new PIs and staff on board, student and staff awards, grants…etc. Every effort of every member in the School counts. Apart from hard work, another key element of our success is cohesive community. I believe that in spite of social distancing and face masks, we have built connections and helped each other out because we all have a common goal in advancing science. This sense of community is precious. Summer days here can be rainy and stormy, but as always, let’s look for the silver lining and rainbow. Whatever your plans are in this summer, stay positive (mentally!), keep working towards your goal, and be kind.
Dr. Lydia Cheung Member, Knowledge Exchange and Global Committee School of Biomedical Sciences
Teaching and Learning Humour as a pedagogical approach to improve student engagement, enhance learning and relieve stress Feature Story
by Dr. Joanna Ho
Research shows that humour may facilitate the relief of stress and tension caused by one's fears, such as by the recent COVID-19 pandemic (Hussein and Aljamili, 2020). According to Jones (2014), the use of humour as a pedagogical tool is on the rise globally in almost every discipline. To validate the positive impacts of humour in teaching at HKU, we purposefully implemented humour pieces and systematically analyzed the impact of such humour incorporation in the field of biomedical sciences (Figure 1) . Such implementation by teachers and the analysis of students’ perceptions on the effectiveness of humor on their learning were carried out in six different courses spanning over the Common Core Curriculum and BBiomedSc programme. The interim data analysis confirmed positive impacts of the implementation. Our results demonstrated that the appropriate use of humour promoted student engagement, enhanced learning and relieved stress. Most student found these humour contents to be effective in helping them to focus in class, and even had motivated them to attend more of the lectures. In fact, students are themselves, active creators and users of humor, in their own studies. Figure 2 shows winners from a humor competition that we had conducted. Students actively submitted their own humor pieces which they had used to learn and remember structures and functions of amino acids. We are currently developing a standardized humour pedagogical system manifested within the framework of the cognitivism learning theory, so that we can consistently generate positive outcomes that are predictable and replicable. We termed the system “Planned Humour Incorporation System for Teaching and Learning Enhancement” (PHISTLE). We believe that humour is a popular personal tool used by individual teachers to enhance teaching and learning here in HKU. With the aim of making humour available as a common tool and promoting the use of it as a community of practice, we are constructing an online repository of humour for teaching. To show your generous support towards the construction of this humour niche, and your support in making it a recognized common practice in the teaching community on the whole, please donate a piece of your favorite humour into our common repository (see below for direct link (and QR code). You may also send your submission directly to edbiochem2020@gmail.com . Together, let’s make more fun with puns!
Figure1. A wordplay type of humour incorporated in the BBiomedSc course BBMS3011 Molecular Neuroscience
Figure2. Winners of the acronym competition, October 2021
The project logo
References · Husseina, A.T. and Aljamili, L.N. (2020) . COVID-19 humor in Jordanian social media: A socio-semiotic approach. Heliyon, 6(12), e05696. · Jones, G. (2014) . Humor to the rescue: How to make introductory economics an appealing social science for non-majors. American Journal of Business Education, 7(2), 151-156. · The project is supported by a Teaching Development Grant (10212.101002120..22600.304.01).
Donate your favorite humour!
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