Inspiring Engagement, Focus, and Community

By January Pearson

In the online classroom, where the community is essential to student success, incorporating humor in seminars provides a simple yet effective way to enhance student engagement and learning. Considering research on the benefits of humor and mini-breaks, this strategy invites students to share simple pun-based humor halfway through the class. These humor breaks add a moment of levity, but also provide educational value and linguistic play, offering a surprisingly effective way to build community and inspire student engagement.

I have a confession to make. I’m not very funny. I wish I were. I’ve watched countless episodes of Seinfeld and read books on humor. But if I’m honest, my elbow is the only funny bone in my body.

Although humor doesn’t come to me naturally, it did for my dad. Whether we were feeding the dog or sweeping the floor, he’d say something about the angry broom getting tired of being pushed around. Growing up with his humor may explain why I’m so fond of dad jokes.  

And it turns out researchers agree. Humor—even the corniest kind—relieves anxiety, reduces depression, builds friendships, improves sleep, enhances workplace productivity, decreases burnout, and even improves our physical health (Zhao et al., 2019). But what if you’re like me and you weren’t born with a Nate Bargatze flare for humor? That’s where simple humor like dad jokes come in.

Humor Mini Breaks Encourage Focus

In my classes, this all began when I read a study by Albulescu et al. (2022) who discuss the benefits of taking a small break halfway through an online seminar. Students who simply look away from the screen for a few moments show improved focus and more engagement during a session. The study even reveals benefits related to improved memory and motivation. As I began implementing mini breaks, I thought I’d try using humor to give students a chance to reset and reengage.

Introducing the Concept to My Students

During the Unit 2 seminar in a term, I reference the Albulescu study on mini breaks and ask my students if they’d be open to sharing dad jokes each week. Then, I set these simple guidelines:

I’ve been using dad jokes as mini breaks for years and have noticed several reasons why they are effective.

Students Participate

My goal is for students to tell the jokes themselves. When students participate, others tend to join in, sparking more laughter. These jokes provide a low-stakes way for even the shyest students to join in, as dad jokes are easy to find online and share in the chat.   

Educational

Although some may see puns as the lowest form of humor, they offer a simple yet intelligent way to make people laugh. They illuminate a truth about words that the poet Mary Ruefle (2020) says so well: “Every word contains a secret inside itself” (p. 91). Dad jokes help students explore those secrets – the multiple meanings, double meanings, shades of meaning, and the histories words hold. In this way, dad jokes offer an informal way to engage in semantics.  For a deeper dive into this idea, a literature review on dad jokes by Sa’adah et al. (2024) outlines four essential ways dad jokes work linguistically, using: homonym, homophony, homography, and paronymy.  Puns provide a sneaky way to get students to pay attention to a word’s “secrets,” reminding them that engaging in wordplay is not only enjoyable, but educational.

Humor for All Ages

I don’t always get the memes and jokes my daughters share. (It took them multiple explanations for me to understand the “Surprise, Surprise”meme.) With our classes often spanning generations, dad jokes offer wholesome humor that are designed for adults to share with kids and vice versa – my four-year old niece is starting to get them, and her grandfather took delight in them throughout his life.

Tailored to Any Topic

Research shows that subject-relevant jokes are the most effective in the college classrooms (Zhou & Lee, 2025). Asking students to find jokes related to course content adds a layer of challenge and strengthens the community bond. For instance, while discussing types of sources, a student once shared: “Why is research more trustworthy if it comes from France? Because it’s Pierre- reviewed.” Or after learning about search techniques: “Why did the researcher break up with Boolean operators? Because every time they asked, “Are we exclusive?” the answer was, “AND, OR… it depends.” After a lesson on revision, another student quipped, “What’s the difference between a cat and a comma? One has its claws at the end of its paws, and one is a pause at the end of a clause.”

Sometimes, when dad jokes hit the apex of efficacy, students will invent their own. One term, when I shared Linda Pastan’s brief poem “The Dogwoods,” a student created an original dad joke inspired by the poem. 

Enjoyable

It’s surprising to me how much students enjoy and look forward to those brief dad joke breaks. To give you a sense of this, I searched for the word “dad” in a random section during a term when I consistently used dad jokes, and I found that almost 20% of students directly mentioned them in the Unit 10 discussion. Here are a few examples: 1). “As for the class, the dad joke break was a delightful highlight!” 2). “What was your favorite part of class? Mine was definitely the dad joke break during seminar!” 3). “I learned so much in your class. I especially enjoyed the dad jokes in seminar!” Who knew one or two minutes of dad jokes could be so much fun?

Community Building

Finally, making personal connections with students in the online classroom can be challenging. But as we know from our own friendships, laughter strengthens those connections. We’ve all experienced the delight of an “inside joke.” Dad jokes provide a way to create that sense of camaraderie. Throughout a term, they inevitably inspire inside jokes with students referencing a joke from another seminar. Even the groans they elicit become part of their charm. When everyone agrees a joke was awful, you’ve hit on something important. You all agree on the terribleness of the joke. And that is something to bond over.

Give it a Try

All in all, dad jokes are one of simplest ways to add a little levity to seminars. They inspire students to engage, they’re educational, and they give students something to look forward to. And in online classes, where connecting personally with our students is so important, they build community. So, even if you’re like me, and you only have two humerus bones in your body, try incorporating humor such as dad jokes in your seminars.

References

Albulescu, P., Macsinga, I., Rusu, A., Sulea, C., Bodnaru, A., & Tulbure, B. T. (2022). “Give me a break!”: A systematic review and meta-analysis on the efficacy of micro-breaks for increasing well-being and performance. PLoS One, 17(8). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272460

Pastan, L. (1987). The dogwoods. Poetry Magazine, 150(1), 18. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?volume=150&issue=1&page=18

Ruefle, M. (2012). Madness, rack, and honey: Collected lectures. Wave Books.

Sa’adah, D., Kustanti, D., & Ruminda (2024). The use of puns to generate humor in dad jokes: A script-based semantic theory of humor analysis. ELITE: English and Literature Journal, 11(2), 174-187. Doi: 10.24252/elite

Zhao, J., Yin, H., Zhang, G., Li, G., Shang, B., Wang, C., & Chen, L. (2019). A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials of laughter and humour interventions on depression, anxiety and sleep quality in adults. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 75(11), 2435-2448. https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.14000

Zhou, W., & Lee, J. C. (2025). Teaching and learning with instructional humor: A review of five-decades research and further direction. Frontiers in Psychology, 16, 1445362. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1445362