A very effective way to engage learners is through the use of humour (humor on the other side of the pond). However, there has to be a health warning here! You really do need to know and understand your target audience in order to achieve real success.
For this reason, humour might not be as good an idea for a generic course as it is for a bespoke course targeted at a small audience.
Ann Iverson, an instructional designer at Allen Interactions, has written a very useful piece in which she outlines 4 ways to create e-learning courses with humour.
Ann starts with the questions you need to ask in order to help decide how appropriate humour might be. She then talks about the four ways:
- Use Real, but Unexpected Language
- Make It Obvious
- Add the Details
- Ask for Help
Click here to read Ann’s article.