Product Description

Grab those paddles. Charge 300. Clear! "Ouch!" Now how do you feel? "Great!"

Humor can be used as a systematic teaching or assessment tool in your classroom and course Web site. It can shock students to attention and bring deadly, boring course content to life. Since some students have the attention span of goat cheese, we need to find creative online and offline techniques to hook them, engage their emotions, and focus their minds and eyeballs on learning.

This book offers numerous techniques on how to effectively use humor in lectures and in-class activities, printed materials, course Web sites and course tests and exams.

These techniques can convert any course into an adult version of Sesame Street.

"If Dr. Hannibal Lecter ate books, this one would make a tasty hors d' oeuvre." -- Clarice Starling

"A non-page-turning marvel...I could stop reading at any point and know I 'm not missing anything." -- Forrest Gump

"Not as much fun as Quidditch, but would be required reading for faculty at the Hogwarts School." -- Harry Potter

"How did you get this book published? Read my letters: YOUR KNOT FUNY!" -- Bart Simpson

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #105680 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Book Info
Offers numerous techniques on how to effectively use humor in lectures and in-class activities, printed materials, course Web sites and course tests and exams. Softcover.

About the Author
Ronald A. Berk is Professor Emeritus of Biostatistics and Measurement and former Assistant Dean for Teaching, The Johns Hopkins University. He received the University’s Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching Award in 1993 and Caroline Pennington Award for Teaching Excellence in 1997 and was inducted as a Fellow in the Oxford Society of Scholars in 1998.He has published 11 books and 130 journal articles/ chapters. These publications reflect his unwavering commitment to mediocrity and his motto: “Go for the Bronze!” He is a popular speaker on teaching and assessment throughout the U.S. and Europe.

Customer Reviews

It's OK...
This book has a few good ideas for helping you to be more interesting to students, but I found that the jokes get old quickly and most of the ideas are pretty lame. Better advice might be to find your own sense of humor and be yourself! If you truly enjoy teaching and love your students, it will come through in your classroom demeaneor. This book is for those teachers and professors who are so seriously humor-deficient as to be terminally boring anyway, so it might not even help. Give the book a try, but I wouldn't recommend paying full price for it; get it used or borrow it from a colleague or library.

user friendly
Useful tips for catching the attention of students by way of humor and surprise factors

Not funny. Not workable.
This guy is really lost. Perhaps he is funny in person, but his book leaves quite a bit to be desired. He has delusions of mediocrity. Nothing in the book is ground breaking or even original. Some of his great ideas come from things like "keep them interested with a hook." This idea he keeps repeating over and over...ad naseum. Don't waste you time or energy on this. Honestly, I can't think of anyone who would be able to use anything in here.