A panic fills your mind. “Ah! Tomorrow is the big final!” You open your notes to page one. The notes stare back at you, piercing your soul with the question, “Did we cover this?” You flip through eighteen notebooks filled with unfamiliar material. You seriously wonder what you paid tuition for; thinking, “If I wanted to read a book, I would have gone to the library.”
Unfortunately, this is the all too familiar outcome of the average college lecture. Much is covered; little is absorbed. Why? Why are paid educators often the worst teachers?
Your mind fades for a moment and you remember the comedy club you attended last weekend. Now, that guy was a communicator! You can vividly recall the story of his grandmother and her nylons. You remember the intimate details of his dad’s fishing trip. You also remember the argument he had with his wife. Apparently Mr. Comedian was a far more effective teacher than Mr. Lecture. At least you remember what he covered! Why?
The answers to the why’s come down to the learning process. The process involves at least three distinct steps: inputs, processing and outputs. The input is when you take in information. Processing is where your mind does something with the information—perhaps you come up with a theory, see how the material relates to your life or ask yourself an intriguing question. The output is where you take what your mind is processing and put it into action. This brings us to three key principles of the learning process: 1) The deeper the processing, the move vibrant the learning experience. 2) The output completes the process. Without output no deep learning occurs. 3) The more meaningful the output, the greater the learning. This by necessity means the learner is emotionally engaged.
Think for a moment about Mr. Lecture. Mr. Lecture approaches people like they are sponges. He dispenses knowledge and the audience is supposed to absorb it. For the most part, this involves passive processing—little depth and little emotional involvement. There is also little output, beyond some rote regurgitation for the midterm and final.
Now, think about Mr. Comedian. The fundamental structure of comedy is setup followed by punch line. The setup gives the mind something to process. When he tells the story about his grandmother, you can picture your grandmother. You can see her struggling with her nylons. He is talking about everyday life, which is far easier for the mind to process than lists of terms, definitions, names and dates (the diet Mr. Lecture gives you). During the setup the comedians gives the audience information the mind starts processing. During the punch line, he introduces a twist. Sometimes that twist is misdirection. Sometimes he ties things together in such a succinct way, that you chuckle while thinking, “That is so true!” In both cases, you experience a deep emotional release when you laugh. Any deep emotional release is an output! Laughter is connected to the learning process.
Compare the two speakers. For forty-five hours of instruction with Mr. Lecture, you only had two, emotionally meaningless outputs: the midterm and the final. For an hour comedy show, you had two-hundred-fifty emotionally gratifying outputs. While it may not be popular to say this within the hallowed halls of academia, in many cases Mr. Comedian is a far better educator than Mr. Lecture!
