30 Rock, improv, and why Learning Designers need a great sense of humor

One of the greatest co-incidences of my life was that I began my career as a designer the same year as 30 Rock aired its first season in 2006. It was the beginning of my parasocial friendship with Tina Fey, and proof that intelligent humor has a very special place in this world. Since 2006, I've watched 30 Rock over and over when facing challenges in personal and professional aspects of my life. Like a kaleidoscope, each time I see the same story, the amazing writing has shown me new ways to overcome challenges with a sense of humor.

In the last 5 years as I pivoted into Learning Experience Design, the love for humor has stayed with me. Academia in general is where humor goes to die, and academic journals could potentially kill your libido, sanity, and any form of joy with their henceforths, therefores, acronym-coinery and pseudo-intellectual frameworks (guilty of everything I list here). I admire the hard work that researchers put in to create an ever-growing list of publications, but I also realized very quickly that this style of writing is not in alignment with my core personality.

I had to find a way to keep my funny bones alive or face death by paper-cuts! Thankfully fields like ID and LXD have the opportunity to disseminate educational information in creative ways, so I knew I had found my happy place to finally utilize humor for strategic/educational purpose.

30 Rock and the exaggerated truth of education

Learners come from diverse backgrounds and a 'good education' could mean something totally different in their particular context. There is no one-education-fits-all, and the successes and failures of various 30 Rock characters despite their education proves the point. Take a look at some of the education-related backstories in 30 Rock:

Liz lemon studied theater tech with a minor in “movement” and wonders why her parents never stopped her. The education lead her to be the head writer of a comedy variety show that TV Guide once called "still on."

Jack Donaghy attended Princeton for business school which lead him to be the VP of East Coast Television and microwaves, writer for 'Irish Arguments weekly' - America’s first ALL-CAPS magazine, and coiner of weird acronyms such as ?DIHC (pronounced dick) - Drive, Intelligence, Humility, Chaos.

Jenna Maroney graduated from ‘The Royal Tampa Academy of Dramatic Tricks’ and ‘Adrian Brody’s unaccredited acting school’. She does not attend reunions because the boat she was educated on, sank.

Kenneth Parcell attended Kentucky Mountain Bible College, where he majored in Television Studies and minored in Bible Sexuality.?By the end of the series, this "apple-faced goon" had become the head of NBC.

Devon Banks went to an experimental boarding school in Carmel where the students teach the teachers and the teachers teach animals; and then on to Northwestern where he majored in “Confidence”. Despite the privileged upbringing, Devon ends up a failure career-wise.

Dr Leo Spaceman attended Ho Chi Minh School of Medicine, admits that "Please! Dr Spaceman is my father, call me Leo.", and yet ends up as Surgeon General of the US in the final season of the show.?

Developing a sense of humor through journaling & improv

I attended workshops on comedy writing and improv offered by the school of acting at Academy of Art University, San Francisco when I was pursuing my MFA in Animation. While I didn't break into the LA comedy scene after having written for the Lampoon at Harvard (the way many comedy writers in the US find their calling), I did develop one habit from those workshops that I still follow: maintaining a journal of comedic ideas and observations. Think Marvelous Mrs Maisel looking through her notes for ideas before a stand-up act at the Gaslight. These notes could look like the theme of a stand-up act, sketches, or just keywords which are not always super-defined. This is raw material that may evolve into something.

I highly recommend reading Tina Fey's advise on improv, she does a good job of explaining the "yes and" with examples. The improv approach also helps me co-create learning experiences with SMEs and learners. The best LXD ideas (for me) come from riffing off of each other in a creative and supportive group, much like improv.

I organize my journal of comedic ideas by topics that are of interest to me, related to a learning experience I am designing, or an area that I have gathered expertise in through lived experiences. For example, some categories in my journal are: growing up in India, life as an immigrant in the US, gaming industry, PhD student life, learning sciences, early childhood education, academia, being a student mom, aging, health, family, and random lists.

Here are some examples of one-liners from my comedy journal:

PhD theme

• Like holiday dinners with a dysfunctional family, getting a PhD only feels warm and memorable in hindsight?
• The first draft of my thesis proposal was redundant and pointless. Like superhero undies.
• Data analysis section titled "I spy with my pie-charts"?

Hometown/family theme

• My highschool still reeks of hormonal rage and misplaced potential.?
• If my Indian grandma could rewrite Beyoncé’s song, it would be “if you like a thing you should’ve put turmeric on it”
• I’m the family’s inspiration or cautionary tale, depending on whom you ask.?

Parenting theme

• Realistic coffee mug for Mother’s Day “world’s number 1 mom* based on subjective and unverifiable data”
• My son referred to the stain of a chocolate-chip cookie on his Diary of a Wimpy Kid book as Diarrhea of a wimpy kid?

Note that the comedy journal does not always generate material for a learning experience directly. It's a place to exercise making comedic observations, a skill which can be applied to LXD.

Humor and Early Childhood Educational Media

In the book ?Media Exposure During Infancy and Early Childhood, I came across the chapter?‘Media characters, parasocial relationships, and the social aspects of children’s learning across media platforms’ written by Melissa Richards &?Sandra Calvert. That chapter is followed by an amazing commentary by?Linda Simensky on ‘Character development in practice: How producers craft engaging characters to drive content delivery’.

This book confirmed my theory of using humor to support education, generating more engagement for learners, and creating memorable learning experiences. PBS KIDS actively seeks out and maintains educational content with humor, evident in series such as the Cat in the Hat knows a lot about that, Curious George, Sesame Street, and Arthur. Super Grover remains my personal favorite off-brand comedic superhero!

Examples of humor in my own LXD work

When I was tasked with designing a game that captured the tentative microbial history of the earth, I came up with this funny-looking microbe fella for a game called Microbe's Journey. There were long periods of time when there were no significant developments in microbes, so I drew the microbe character getting bored for that part of the game's timeline. When first humans evolved, they probably had an identity crisis (quite the evolution for microbes), I captured this sentiment with a thought bubble of the first human saying "Who am?". I was so lucky the SME and leadership involved in this project had a nice sense of humor, and were very open to having a quirky microbe character be the face of their microbiology course.

Another character that I'm currently developing is the 'Research Bug', that came out of my comedic journal entry that said "What if the saying bitten by the research bug was an actual regalia-wearing quirky bug who bites regular people and turns them into academic researchers?" I'll be using this Research Bug character to create a 2d RPG game in Unity as part of new student orientation for the PhD program.

Humor Takeaways for Learning Experience Designers

3 reasons why LXDs should develop a better sense of humor and inject comedy in their learning materials:

1. Learners are already stressed out by factors beyond school. Humorous content can provide a comic relief, a breathing space
2. Funny moments are more memorable. Have you ever caught yourself saying "Remember that funny part in the movie..." - that frame of reference can also be utilized in educational content.
3. Humor makes content more engaging. Examples: PBS KIDS, those teachers on YouTube singing rap about chemistry and math, TedEd animated content with some humor

My favorite journal article titles with a humorous twist

Well, I do give credit to the few academic researchers who DO find a way to use their humor while naming journal articles:

(NOTE: All of these are actual journal article titles and not an outcome of a nerdy improv workshop, click on the links to read more if you're interested!)

Fantastic yeasts and where to find them: the hidden diversity of dimorphic fungal pathogens

miR miR?on the?wall, who's the most malignant medulloblastoma?miR?of them all?

Leaf me alone: visual constraints on the ecology of social group formation

It's not 'hippies?running?barefoot?through?a field of daisies' and other contemplations on creativity with Dr. Jonathan Plucker

Share your ideas!

In what ways have you used humor in your work in the field of education? How has humor been helpful for the learner you are or the learners you support?

#lxd #learningdesign #learningexperiencedesign #instructionaldesign #id #phd #creativewriting #comedy