Conventional eLearning wisdom says, avoid humor – it’s far too dangerous. You won’t have to look hard to find dozens of stories of someone who has been reprimanded or fired for offending someone else in the name of a good gag. These stories are legitimate, and the stakes are high. Often institutions are unwilling to take the risk on comedy when there is even a smidgen of a chance that someone will be offended.

Why is this association between offence and amusement so thinly divided? The apparent answer is that many of the things that amuse us, sit painfully close to things that can anger us. There are several theories that attempt to classify and explain the things that make us laugh. In a nutshell you could sum these up as Incongruity, Superiority & Relief.

Incongruous humor is perhaps the most obvious. When something is seen from a new angle, when it surprises and delights us, when it seems out of place or inappropriate to a set – it can trigger our funny-bones with it’s unexpectedness or its unusual perspective. Consider the image of the dog below. The image amuses because the size of the bone is incongrouous to the size of the dog.

Superiority theory dates all the way back to Aristotle. The fundamental notion is that we laugh at the foibles of those we view as inferior. It’s the reason we watch comedies like Dumb and Dumber and find them amusing. It also could be directly associated with things like stereotypes. There is a long tradition of stereotypical characterization which runs parallel to the phenomena of Superiority rooted humor. Consider the common stereotypes found in literature, theater & television and you’ll find almost limitless examples of the denigration of a group of people into a cluster that is mocked by comedians. So why do we tolerate this sort of humor? And does it mean that all humor has no place in eLearning?

The relief theory of humor is rooted in the believed origins of laughter. The idea is that we laugh to relieve stress or to approach difficult subjects.

It’s interesting to note that as recently as 2010 psychologists from the University of Colorado, McGraw & Warren, proposed Benign Violation Theory. BVN attempts to form a common singular definition of what qualifies as comical by isolating three parameters;

something threatens one’s sense of how the world “ought to be”

the threatening situation seems benign

a person sees both interpretations at the same time

I like this viewpoint quite a bit. One reason is because it identifies a simple reason that our humorous efforts can go awry. You could even consider it a sort of test. Is the narrative, the context, the character or the joke – fundamentally benign? It also explains why culture is so completely intertwined into the reaction to a joke. What we regard as benign is entirely dependent on our unique world view, so what we regard as offensive vs. humorous will be equally dependent.

Offending your audience is one of three potential negative outcomes that can occur when jokes go awry in your eLearning projects.

Your audience can be distracted by the humor

Your audience can be offended by the humor

Your audience can be confused or unimpressed by the humor

So why bother at all? If so many things can go wrong, should we try to put humor in our eLearning courses. I argue yes, and a small but growing body of research supports this argument. For a good overview have a look at Zac Stambor’s great overview of humor in the Journal of the American Psychological Association. It turns out that learners with limited motivation are very likely to perform better and have better long term outcomes when on topic, appropriate, inoffensive humor is used during a course. They are much more likely to rate their course experience more favorably, and they are much less likely to abandon the course. This means that most trainees would benefit significantly from a little giggle while they work.

For a more comprehensive exploration both of the rationale behind using humor in your online training, and some advice about how it might be integrated, check out the on demand eSeminar: Louder, Faster, Funnier: Humor in eLearning. You might also be interested in one of these related resources:

Cathy Moore’s blog on humor: http://blog.cathy-moore.com/2007/09/laugh-and-your-learners-laugh-with-you-maybe/

Janet Clarey on Comedy in eLearning http://janetclarey.com/2008/04/11/humor-in-the-design-of-e-learning/

Quintus Joubert with counterpoint: http://www.cybermediacreations.com/2007/10/elearning-jokes-not-funny.html

Aruna Vayuvegula with practical advice: http://blog.commlabindia.com/elearning/include-humour-in-elearning

My own thoughts on integrating humor and eLearning: http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/2011/10/make-em-laugh-is-comedy-appropriate-in-elearning.html

Zac Stambor’s very good overview of the literature: http://www.apa.org/monitor/jun06/learning.aspx

An amusing Pin Board with eLearning humor: http://pinterest.com/upsidelearning/elearning-humor/

An amusing example of a professor using humor via video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5iYYXVDa_hA

I’d love to hear your thoughts about comedy in eLearning – please feel free to share your thoughts and ideas in the comment section below.

While Adobe Illustrator is not part of the Adobe eLearning Suite, if you have Adobe Illustrator on the same machine as your copy of Adobe Captivate 5, you will be able to take advantage of both to import your Adobe Illustrator files.

In the video, RJ demonstrates how you can take vector images from your Adobe Illustrator file directly into Adobe Photoshop using Copy/Paste. The paste operation allows you to paste the objects as a smart object in Photoshop.

Once you’ve moved the element into PS, the import into Adobe Captivate is identical to a standard import of a Photoshop Document.

You can watch the video on our AdobeELearning YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/AdobeELearning?feature=mhum#p/f/6/jtK9Mgmqnuk

Don’t forget to subscribe while you are there.

Locations – US East Coast (DC, NYC, Boston, …). Do let us know if you are not in these areas, we will try and accommodate a slot to visit you.

Our Agenda for the meeting will be:

- Take our users through a sneak-peek of what to expect in the future from Captivate and eLearning Suite

- Understand your workflows/concerns better and tailor solutions into our roadmap

- Deep dive (beyond Captivate 5) and suggest best practices to optimize your existing workflows

- Help set up a direct communication channel with the Adobe product team

Please leave a comment on this post if you would like to meet us.  Look forward to our discussions!

“We chose Adobe Captivate because of its exceptional ease of use and ability to support rich media and interactivity,” says Lukasik. “We learned how to use Adobe Captivate very quickly. And, we have been able to make our courses interactive to keep learners engaged.”

Check out the PSI Success Story here; http://bit.ly/4r1hUD

As I researched I found some solid videos, and this one was my favorite. (Apologies in advance to my international readers, the end of the video takes an overtly nationalistic tone, but i think the quality of content overall is extremely useful.)

The video was created by You Tube user mapleseed25, on June 2 of 2009.

If you are interested in 21st Century Skills and specifically how Adobe’s eLearning Suite can contribute to the development of these skills in learners of all ages, I’d encourage you to attend the eSeminars I’m giving tomorrow, Wednesday Dec. 16. Details are below;

      BASIC: Meeting Educational Objectives with 21^st Century E-Learning Development & Management Tools

          http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?event=detail&id=1566499&loc=en_us

A    ADVANCED: 21^st Century Digital Literacy Skills; Tools for the next generation 
    http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?event=detail&id=1566510&loc=en_us

Shameer Ayyappan, Captivate Product Manager, posted a Connect recording of his very cool Captivate Twitter Widget presentation to the Captivate Blog.  He says…

I’ve finally managed make a decent recording of my session at the Adobe Learning Summit. The session was titled ‘Collaborative learning using Captivate and Twitter’- and showcases a new idea around how we believe Captivate courses of the future can help bridge the gap between ‘Classroom based training’ and eLearning. Follow this link to view the demo (runs 18 mins).

You can check out the original post here.  Basically this is a widget that makes it possible to do in place (on the right slide at the specified location) commenting – using Twitter & or in Captivate. Think of it as “In-Context Tweet Commenting”. 

(While the chart is from me, the concept of dividing the field this way comes from http://www.elearningguild.com/research/archives/index.cfm?id=126&action=viewonly The eLearning Guild’s 2008 360 Report on Authoring and Development Tools.)

Navigating modern eLearning can be incredibly confusing. There are hundreds of tools and resources, and it can be quite a struggle to get some firm footing on these constantly shifting sands.  But as the field matures, it is easier to get a little perspective. If we accept for a moment this model, as a representation of facets of the process, it becomes easier to define a software application like Adobe Captivate. 

I often hear people say “Captivate is Simulation software.” Well that’s certainly true, if a bit of an understatement. But Captivate is so much more than that. First because it can effortlessly capture images, video, and in fact the entire user experience, and second because capturing and creating simulations is just the tip of the Captivate iceburg. I also often hear people say that Captivate is Rapid eLearning software. Again, that’s unquestionably true. It makes it possible for anyone to rapidly create eLearning content, providing a simple workflow to migrate existing training materials into engaging rich media experiences.

So given the above model, Captivate is a full feature Rapid eLearning and Simulation tool, that provides solid deployment options.

Simply put, eLearning Suite, adds the industry’s most powerful media editing (Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, Acrobat, Soundbooth and more) and really amazing deployment options (multi-scorm packaging and mobile devices for example) to Captivate. You can think of it this way; use Captivate if you only need Rapid eLearning Authoring and Simulation with standard LMS integration and publishing options. Use eLearning Suite if you want the whole pie.  

Just a couple of caveats;

One of the most spectacular reasons to love Captivate, is the Captivate Reviewer. Using Reviewer you can share your eLearning projects between your team members, and solicit in place comments and feedback that will dramatically reduce the time required for your review cycle.

The eLearning Suite goes way beyond the products that are included. Each one has been extended to add functionality and integration systems to make the workflow between Captivate and the media editors smoother and more productive. Combined these form a system which is unbelievably potent for eLearning course development.I have been stunned by how constantly i now use all of the eLearning Suite Tools, and by the time and frustration saved by the thoughtful interoperability between products. (My personal favorite is jumping straight from Captivate to Soundbooth and back again to edit audio.) 

In fact all week long, dozens of doctoral students have been handing in multiple drafts of their final papers to me, and not one of them needed to brave the cold to do so. This one small miracle of the eLearning age, I owe to Buzzword, which in my opinion is one of the greatest pieces of software of the 21st century.

Buzzword is a feature rich, hardcore word processor that runs in a browser. In many ways its the best word processor I’ve used. But enough writing, I’ll just show you. Check out the Captivate Overview below.

BuzzwordIntro.htm