From a student’s perspective, there’s nothing fun about taking a test.
Yet research and classroom experience suggest that students actually appreciate exams that contain small touches of humor. The key is making sure the humor doesn’t distract from the question or affect performance.
One safe way to add humor is through application-based questions that include familiar characters from cartoons, movies, or television.
For example:
After Charlie missed a kick during an important football game, he became depressed and vowed to quit the team. The psychologist pointed out that Mr. Brown’s “incompetence” didn’t always occur. The psychologist’s response was most typical of a __________ therapist.
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behavioral
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psychoanalytic
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client-centered
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cognitive
Using Charlie Brown makes the question slightly more memorable without changing the academic task.
However, pop-culture humor has one major requirement:
Students must recognize the reference.
Early in my teaching career, I used characters from Sesame Street, The Muppets, and The Simpsons. Thankfully Homer and Bart are still safe choices, but some earlier references eventually became dated.
Today the same strategy might involve characters from Big Mouth or BoJack Horseman.
Another reliable approach is self-deprecating humor. Inserting the instructor’s name into a question is usually safe and often gets a quiet smirk.
For example:
Mark is continually tense, jittery, and apprehensive for no specific reason. Dr. Shatz’s diagnosis would most likely be:
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phobia
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post-traumatic stress disorder
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obsessive-compulsive disorder
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generalized anxiety disorder
The most important principle of instructional humor is less is more.
Exams are serious academic tools, and humor should be subtle and occasional. The goal isn’t laughter—it’s simply to ease tension and humanize the testing experience.
If students smirk during an exam, the humor worked.
During a test, the only person who should be laughing out loud…
is the teacher.
