6


Maintaining Motivation in Teaching

Robots are not people. They are mechanically more perfect than we are, they have astonishing intellectual capacity, but they have no soul.

—Karel Čapek, 1926, p. 7–8

In this final chapter, we explore an issue that many educators grapple with but might not acknowledge or feel comfortable addressing: that is, maintaining motivation. Excellent educators are expected to be enthusiastic, committed to learners’ success, and motivated to keep their classes or workshops lively. Yet even excellent educators can find their motivation waning at times. Increasing numbers of learners, seemingly chaotic clinical learning environments, and mounting workplace expectations can all affect motivation. As a result, educators who are truly excellent can also slip into an emotional state more robotic than human and thus less humane. In fact, an ebb and flow in motivation is common in life. In our view, when people experience low motivation, it is simply another reflection of being human. Bringing excitement back and beginning to resolve issues related to motivation are an opportunity to grow and develop in innovative ways.

Moving beyond feelings of low motivation is not easy. As a tentative starting point in not becoming a robot, consider these questions. Do you think that your teaching approach has not changed since you started teaching several years ago? Do you look forward to a new course or workshop with enthusiasm, or are you more likely to turn to a new group of learners with a sense of ho-hum? Do you ever feel like a robot just doing what is needed to get through a learning experience? If you are becoming a sleepwalking, unenthusiastic educator, then this chapter might be timely. Perhaps you are losing your motivation to excel at your career, or, worse, you are experiencing a syndrome such as burnout or rust-out.

Educator burnout and rust-out have become topics in the education literature. An early definition of burnout put forward by Edelwich and Brodsky is “a continuously increasing loss in idealism, energy and purpose” in one’s work (1980, p. 6). Maslach, Schaufeli, and Leiter (2001) added the idea of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization to the definition of burnout, and Shirom (1989) emphasized the negative emotional reaction that happens in someone experiencing burnout. The outcomes associated with burnout include physical, social, emotional, and psychological challenges that can have negative effects on people’s personal and professional well-being.

Burnout has been studied in many populations but is most often associated with caring professions such as health care, education, and human service careers in which practitioners have close relationships with other people and high levels of work stress. Bridgeman, Bridgeman, and Barone (2018) note that burnout is composed of physical and behavioural symptoms (e.g., anger, frustration, suspicion) that compound over time and influence one’s career ambitions in a negative way. Burnout is said to result from factors such as excessive workload, perception of unfair rewards, lack of a sense of control over work, and incongruence between organizational and personal values (Bridgeman et al., 2018; Dall’Ora, Reinius, & Griffiths, 2020).

“Rust-out” is a less commonly used term but equally negative for practitioners and learners taught by someone experiencing this condition. Leider and Buchholz (1995, p. 7) introduced the rust-out syndrome and defined it as a “slow process of deterioration of motivation through the disuse of an individual’s potentials.” In some ways, rust-out is the opposite of burnout, with burnout caused by overdoing and rust-out attributed to being under-challenged or bored. Clouston (2015) describes rust-out as the boredom-based counterpart of burnout since it occurs when workers are no longer challenged in positive ways by their work and consequently become uninterested in and apathetic about doing their jobs well. This boredom can be stressful and lead to psychological and physical symptoms (Brown, 2015). If the emotional difficulties created by rust-out are not dealt with, then the outcome is stagnation and loss of a sense of purpose in the individual. Poor-quality work is usually the consequence, to the detriment of the education provided to learners.

Both burnout and rust-out, if left unchecked, have negative influences on job satisfaction. Being satisfied with one’s career is an important precursor to quality curricula delivery and influences recruitment and retention of educators (Cowin & Moroney, 2018). In other words, when educators experience their work as personally fulfilling, they are more successful in their careers and more likely to remain in their current positions. Satisfied educators find meaning in their work and feel compelled to continue to do it in an exemplary way. Riley (2018) concluded that there is a relationship between overall wellness (in part, freedom from syndromes such as burnout and rust-out) and job satisfaction. Additionally, learners benefit when educators are satisfied in their roles.

How can pre-service and in-service educators in the health professions prevent rust-out and burnout and achieve job satisfaction? Some educators seem to become more passionate, engaged, and skilled over time. Perhaps the secret is the successful creation and maintenance of human connections. That is, the educators who get the sense (or other indications) that they have real connections with learners in their classes might be on the way to achieving at least a certain level of career fulfillment, thereby minimizing the possibility of the negative sequalae.

There is limited research available on the importance of educator job satisfaction and engagement and the potential influence that they have on the quality of the learning milieu and on educators’ well-being (Milburn-Shaw & Walker, 2017). We believe that, when educators do feel satisfied, motivated, and engaged, they can create an environment in which learners thrive. In this chapter, we comment on how the community of inquiry model discussed in Chapter 3 can provide insights into maintaining motivation in educational settings. We emphasize how engagement can make the difference between an excellent educator and a robotic teacher. We explain how human connections that count include attending to the “little things,” affirming the value of others, and sharing humour appropriately.

INSIGHTS INTO MOTIVATION

It can be difficult to understand what motivation means to educators and how they can best remain motivated and not become robotic teachers. As a way of gaining insight into what motivation can look like for educators, we begin with a story shared by an academic who teaches health profession students online. She had been teaching students for years, mostly face to face but more recently online. At first, she thought that it would be challenging to form bonds with learners and really get to know them as she had in traditional classes. This experienced educator changed her perception. One day she received an email from a student in her group:

I just want to thank you for helping me through this semester. I didn’t tell you, but I have been going through a really tough time. I had my second miscarriage about two weeks into the term. We have been going through treatments and trying to conceive for several years. This loss was a real blow to our hope for a family. Then we were victims of the flooding, [and] having to leave our house and possessions and spend time in the evacuation centre was scary and disheartening. Finally, as we got back home and resettled (thankfully our house was not damaged), my mom was diagnosed with ALS. The turmoil I have experienced this term has been unmatched by anything I have experienced before.

At times I thought of dropping the course, perhaps even dropping out of the program, but I kept going. Why—because of you. I am not sure how you knew I needed words of encouragement and flexibility with assignment dates, but you must have a sense of the stress your students are experiencing. Your frequent reassuring emails, seemingly written just to me, made me feel that you cared about my learning and about me as a fellow human being. Your abundant thoughtful comments on my assignments both taught me important content and motivated me to try harder to do well. The challenging and engaging learning activities you shared piqued my interest and encouraged me to make time for my course during all the trauma in my life. Thank you—you really made a difference for me.

This story gives us hints about the ways that educators maintain their motivation to do their job in an exemplary way. This chapter is about how you, as an educator of health professionals, can remain motivated to provide excellent teaching and keep from becoming a burned-out or rusted-out robotic educator. About how you can remain energized and inspired by your work. About how you can continue to provide excellent learner-focused teaching when there seems to be a din of negativity, the challenge of constant change, and seemingly relentless competing urgencies threatening your plans and best intentions. About how you can keep from becoming a robotic teacher, an educator who follows directions and scripts and curricula but is absent in heart, an educator who succumbs to the syndromes of rust-out and burnout.

Insights from the CoI model. Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000) developed the community of inquiry model. In Chapter 3, we explained how the model provides educators with important insights as they create and enhance relationships between educators and learners. The model also provides insight into how educators can maintain their motivation to remain excellent at what they do. To review, the CoI model posits that “a community of inquiry is a group of individuals who collaboratively engage in purposeful critical discourse and reflection to construct personal meaning and confirm mutual understanding” (Garrison et al., p. 1). There are three elements in the model: social presence, teaching presence, and cognitive presence. In brief, social presence is the ability of educators and learners to create relationships and to share their personalities in the learning environment. Teaching presence is the way in which educators structure and facilitate learning experiences to create meaningful learning. And cognitive presence is the aspect of an educational milieu in which learners engage in individual reflection and shared discourse (Garrison et al.).

When educators successfully create learning experiences in which there are social presence, teaching presence, and cognitive presence, they are likely to feel satisfied that they have done their job well. Learners in such a situation experience meaningful learning and develop interpersonal relationships with other learners and with the educator that they value. The creation of a healthy CoI can fuel the cycle of career satisfaction and positive student outcomes foundational to preventing and remedying educator burnout and rust-out.

Robotic teachers are not likely to attain a high level of social presence, especially when they guard against sharing their personalities with learners (however inadvertently). In turn, learners who do not get the sense that there is a “real” educator guiding their learning can also be reluctant to open up and create relationships in the learning milieu. The result can be a deficit in achieving the social presence element of the CoI.

Likewise, teaching presence (and the design and creation of meaningful learning experiences) are not usual outcomes if the educator is bored or uninspired. It takes energy, optimism, and enthusiasm for an educator to establish teaching presence. Rusted-out and burned-out individuals have a serious deficit in these areas. The omission of teaching presence means that yet another element of the CoI can be lacking in such situations.

Finally, cognitive presence, or the establishment of opportunities for learners to engage in sustained reflection and discourse, is in many ways dependent on the creation of teaching presence and social presence in the classroom. When elements of the CoI are minimal or non-existent, it becomes challenging for learners to fully engage in meaningful learning.

Perhaps if educators can make strong connections with learners through social presence, and perceive that they are engaging in high-quality teaching by attending to the elements of teaching presence, then learners will be guided and supported to engage in sustained reflection and meaningful discourse (cognitive presence). As we will highlight later in this chapter, seemingly the small actions and strategies that skilled educators use often become the catalysts for these positive outcomes and the establishment of a healthy CoI. Self-awareness is an essential first step. The strategy below outlines a beginning step for educators.

ENGAGEMENT MAKES THE DIFFERENCE

Educator engagement and the effect on learners. Educators are the keystone of the educational process and have a direct impact on learners and their learning experiences (Alpaslan, Bozgeyikli, & Avci, 2017). Most fully engaged educators love their job, work willingly, establish healthy relationships with their learners, and conduct the educational process successfully (Karahan, 2018). When educators achieve these outcomes and are satisfied with their careers and work performance, learners benefit in several ways. For example, learners who learn from engaged educators are more successful in achieving learning outcomes, gaining on measures of emotional intelligence over a term, and developing critical thinking skills (Alvandi, Mehrdad, & Karimi, 2015). On the reverse side, disengaged educators (demonstrated by indolence and offensiveness) cause learners’ interest and engagement to wane (Broeckelman-Post et al., 2016). Educator behaviour (or misbehaviour) influences student behaviour and how students experience the learning environment.

Educator engagement and the effect on teachers. Educator engagement also influences the educator. Wilcox and Lawson (2018) found that educators who scored high on engagement scales demonstrated higher levels of efficacy and emotional resilience when it came to facing the demands of system-wide organizational change. Put another way, they were less likely to burn out when faced with challenges at work. Karahan (2018) found that, when teachers achieved their goals, they were more likely to maintain engagement and be fulfilled at work. Educator engagement leads to more successful pedagogical outcomes and goal achievement and higher levels of personal career satisfaction and work wellness (Anikin, Lapteva, Kormin, Bondarovskaya, & Poletaeva, 2017).

To engaged educators, success is much more than mastering and sharing professional knowledge and skills; success in part is about positive social and emotional relationships with learners (Anikin et al., 2017). Positive educator-learner relationships, based on appropriate sharing and connection, can lead to “inner emancipation from the constraints of an increasingly cold system where success is too often based solely on performance metrics” (Kresin-Price, 2013). In our view, success as an exemplary educator—one who is genuinely able to say, “I love my work!”—stems from feeling engaged with learners and enjoying the positive connections within the educator-learner relationship. When educators believe that they provide high-quality teaching, and make strong connections with learners, they are also usually well satisfied with their careers. They can feel professionally fulfilled when their interactions with learners allow them to think that they made a difference for those individuals. Essentially, the experience of engaging with their learners can make the difference that fuels educators to continue to do their work in an exemplary way.

Likewise, from learners’ perspectives, when participants in a learning experience (whether it involves attending a brief orientation session to learn about a new piece of equipment or enrolling in a course leading to a professional credential) believe that their educators care about them as individuals, their experience is likely to be positive. Positive educator-learner relationships have motivational effects on both parties. As Beaton (2017, p. 82) wrote, “just as students thrive in a safe, engaging learning environment, so do teachers.” Such an environment is created, at least in part, by healthy and meaningful connections among all those involved in the learning experience (educator-learner and learner-learner connections).

But how can you as an educator continue the positive cycle of connection and net all the benefits that this sequence spins off, especially benefits such as staying motivated and enthusiastic in your educator role? How can you become the best you can be and avoid the burnout and rust-out that harm both you and your learners? Human connections have positive impacts on educators and learners. How can you as an educator facilitate successful connections with learners in which you get feedback that you have made a positive difference, for their benefit and your own career fulfillment, career longevity, and personal wellness? As a way of remaining in touch with times when your engagement made a difference to your learners, the strategy below is an invitation to reflect on special memories.

CONNECTIONS THAT COUNT

Many of you might recall a question on the admission form for your professional program: “Why do you want to be a . . . (nurse, or dentist, or respiratory tech, or physiotherapist)?” This question follows us throughout our careers. Then, as the work years go by, and some days are painfully challenging, the question changes slightly as you begin to ask yourself “Why did I ever become a . . . (nurse, or dentist, or respiratory tech, or physiotherapist)?”

In our view, unless educators can find ways to initiate and maintain positive connections with learners, those who feel as though they make a difference, they are at risk of succumbing to career killers such as burnout and rust-out. When educators function only as robotic teachers, making these effective connections becomes more challenging or perhaps even impossible. As the epigraph to this chapter notes, “robots are not people. . . . They have no soul.” We would add that robots also have no instincts, no warmth, and no compassion. Robotic teachers cannot (at least at this point in the evolution of robots) make the same meaningful connections with learners that motivated and inspired educators can. We suggest three approaches that educators in any setting can implement to initiate connections and make them count. First, attend to the little things; second, affirm the value of learners; third, share humour appropriately.

Attend to the Little Things

As Johnson (2019) quipped, “the difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.” This applies to many aspects of professional success, including the education of health professionals. Attending to the little things is a simple approach that educators can employ to initiate meaningful connections with learners. When people connect and engage in any relationship, they notice the little things: actions, gestures, facial expressions, tone of voice, dress, pace of speech, attentive (or inattentive) posture, and deportment. We make judgments based on our experience of these elements, such as whether the person is interested in our opinions, cares about our experiences, or understands our perspectives.

In educational environments, invitational theory (Purkey & Novak, 2015) is foundational to understanding why some of these little things help to create and support connections among educators and learners. Invitational theory purports that successful educators invite (or “summon cordially”) learners to participate actively in the learning milieu (Purkey & Novak, 2015, p. 1). Implicit in this invitational stance “is an ethical process involving continuous interactions among and between human beings” (Purkey & Novak, 2015, p. 1). Maintaining the humanity of participants in educational experiences, for both educators and learners, is essential to establishing and preserving connections. These positive connections help to maintain educator motivation, inhibit rust-out and burnout, and likely enhance the experience for learners.

Creating invitational learning environments that attend to the little things fosters human connections in both in-person and online settings. The process can seem to be more straightforward in traditional situations in which pre-service or in-service learners gather in a physical space. In online interactions, however, the little things still influence the possibility of a positive connection. For example, in online teaching, a quick response from an educator can indicate interest in the perspective shared by a learner, whereas a delayed reply (or no reply) from the educator can indicate a lack of interest in the comment or that it is not valued.

Tone is equally important in relationship building. Since online communicators do not have the opportunity to augment their messages with congruent non-verbal messages, tone can be more easily misinterpreted in the virtual world. Choosing precise words that relay the tone intended is essential to make the intended meanings of messages clear. When a visual component is included in online interactions through video conferencing, dress and deportment become essential elements. Just as in a university lecture hall or staff development classroom, so too in a video chat an unkempt look and messy background are clues to learners that educators do not value the interaction enough to look their best.

As we discussed in an earlier chapter, spending time on introductions at the beginning of a learning experience is important. In in-person settings, consider having learners form partnerships and introduce one another. In online settings, try having learners provide video introductions of themselves. Notice the little things that help to shape the connections within the group, either in a positive or in a negative way. In group discussions, identify commonalities and shared interests on which participants comment. Offer a personal response to each learner’s introduction. Comment on something specific that the learner said, and ask a question to further the introduction as a way of humanizing the activity. As educators and learners get to know one another, the foundation is laid for the sense of class community and meaningful relationships.

After participants have introduced themselves, follow-up activities can help to make connections count. In in-person settings, allocate time for learners to locate (and do a small activity with) another learner in the room who shares a commonality. In online settings, invite learners to find someone else in the class (based on that person’s introduction) to discuss a specific course-related question provided by the educator. These activities provide opportunities for each person in the course or workshop to work with (and get to know) another participant in a more meaningful way.

In 1965, Karl Rahner published a book called Everyday Things. It is a reflection on the daily round of common, ordinary things, everyday activities of living that we often take for granted. Facilitating introductions in any learning experience becomes an ordinary (expected and perhaps loathed) activity. By tweaking this activity to create more meaningful interactions, and by giving introductions the importance that they deserve, educators can use them to humanize the classroom and lay a foundation for a growing sense of community.

In addition to introductions, there are many other little things that skilled educators can do to forge strong human connections. To illustrate, we share a comment made by an educator in the health professions who teaches in an online setting. She commented on how nurturing the little things skilfully and with sensitivity engaged learners and left her feeling satisfied and fulfilled.

I feel I have done my job well, and I feel most satisfied, when I make a strong connection with at least one student in a course. I try to keep notes on details about each student that they share during their introductions (and in their other posts). I start a spreadsheet with their name, location, where they are in their program, and details about their families, pets, etc. Very early in the first week I send each student a personal email where I reference something unique about them. For example, I might respond “Lilly it is great to have a student in the class with a special interest in. . . . We will be depending on you to add [to this topic during] our discussions. This will be invaluable.” Inevitably I get a response back, and a conversation and fledgling relationship begin that can be built upon as the term continues.

This example shows a small educator-initiated action that takes little time but can lead to both enhanced learner engagement and, ultimately, educator career fulfillment. In the next strategy, we suggest how educators and learners can use artifacts that have meaning to them as a way of creating connections.

Affirm the Value of Learners

Actions that affirm the value of others strengthen human connections and help people to feel satisfied and fulfilled. As we have emphasized throughout this chapter, experiences of satisfaction and fulfillment leave little room for burnout, rust-out, and low educator motivation. Educators, through their actions and words, communicate to learners that, no matter how challenging the learning journey becomes, they are available to support them in their learning. Educators let learners know from their first interactions that they value them as individuals and believe in their ability to accomplish their learning goals. Learners often enter educator-learner relationships in a more vulnerable position (at least they might perceive a power differential), and skilled educators find ways to minimize this perception and affirm learners’ potential.

Educators affirm the value that they see in learners by finding ways to build upon their existing knowledge and skills. Opening learning activities with self-assessment exercises on a topic provides both educators and learners with an analysis of areas where learners are strong and where they need to develop further. Simply engaging each student in discussions (either in person on online using video) about a topic can help an educator to understand the learner’s background knowledge. Once educators have a preliminary understanding of what learners know, they can involve them in peer-teaching opportunities in which they share their wisdom with other members of the learning group. Acknowledging and having learners share their knowledge comprise an overt demonstration of valuing.

Individualizing teaching approaches can also communicate that each learner within a group is valued. Courses and workshops designed (and taught) to maximize opportunities for learners to focus on their own priority learning goals and outcomes put them at the centre. Sometimes, to achieve this, educators need to be innovative and flexible, such as by providing a choice of learning activities and resources, so that learners can customize their experiences. Educators can personalize learning by supporting learners’ individual goals and their voices and choices. When educators feel as though they are working within preset and rigid curricula, it can even take the bending or breaking of long-held approaches to individualize teaching approaches in ways that genuinely affirm the value of learners. However, the benefits for learners (and for educators) can make challenging the tradition or system worthwhile.

Successful educators believe in learners. They make every effort to see the potential in all of their learners and follow up with strategies that help them to realize their potential. In many instances, educators must remain creative as learners face challenges and struggle with progress. It might take some experimenting with various approaches to be able to connect with and consistently affirm that a learner is valuable. This is especially evident when learners have complex personal lives or have had limited academic success in the past. The following story demonstrates such a situation.

Helen was from a small town and had several children and an equal number of failed relationships that she disclosed to the class in the introduction forum of an online class. She had been working as a licensed practical nurse for 10 years and had not been in a formal learning situation since graduation. Now she was taking her first course online toward a baccalaureate in nursing. Helen also disclosed her self-doubt and fear of failure in her course introduction post. Her teacher noted this history and reached out to Helen with an individual email the day that she shared her introduction. In her email, the teacher congratulated Helen for taking this important first step toward her learning goal, acknowledged her feelings, and offered her support and encouragement. Then the teacher followed up with regular contact with Helen during the term, inquiring about how she was doing and reiterating her willingness to answer questions about the course or just to talk. At one crisis point during the term, Helen asked for a 24-hour extension on an assignment, which the teacher approved without question. Another time the teacher noticed that Helen had a special interest in patients with cerebral palsy (based on an example that Helen provided in an assignment), so the teacher located an interesting article on the topic and shared it with her. When Helen created an engaging video on the health issues faced by homeless people for one class assignment, the teacher asked her for permission to share her work with the class.

Helen passed the course and in an email to the teacher at the end of the course wrote “thank you for believing in my potential when I didn’t believe in myself. You made all the difference.” The notion of valuing learners can be summed up in the following poem:

Seeing the Shine
Every pebble
No matter how chipped and broken
Potentially contains
A dusting of gold.
(Perry, 2009)

An affirmation strategy follows. It can be used by peer learners or educators to enhance the sense of worth for class participants.

Share Humour Appropriately

Shared humour and lighthearted interactions among people serve a social purpose that can facilitate the human-to-human connection. Karri, an exemplary educator, explained the social purpose of humour: “When you laugh with others, it tells them that you want to share something of yourself with them; and you get to know another part of them too. This gives a sense of solidarity. It creates a relationship that facilitates the work you do.”

Humour in education goes beyond joking, clowning, and cartooning. Educators who effectively use humour to create connections with learners project a joyful attitude and zest for life. Educators who use humour well go beyond being a stand-up comedian or an entertainer; they convey a positive attitude or optimism and see the funny aspects of their worlds. Importantly, they open up opportunities for learners to do the same.

Astedt-Kurki and Liukkonen (1994) defined humour as joie de vivre, manifested in human interactions in the form of fun, jocularity, and laughter. They acknowledged that humour is a complex cognitive and emotional process. Hunt (1993) established that humour can be “many things to many people,” that it must be interpreted, and that it is “whatever people think is funny” (p. 34). Classic humourist Baughman (1974, p. 54) identified humour as our sixth sense, as important as any of the other five:

Much more should be said and written about humour, for so many think it means no more than the ability to tell a funny story or to respond to one. Actually, a sense of humour refers to a complete philosophy of life. It includes taking life’s responsibilities seriously but oneself not too seriously. Other less obvious components of humour are these: the ability to relax, to escape from tension, to get pleasure out of the joys of others, to live unselfishly, laughing with people.

This broad definition of humour is congruent with the attitude that motivated and engaged educators use to create connections that count with learners.

Humour and laughter are parts of sharing the lighter side of life, but this attitude goes further. It is an all-encompassing disposition, an ability to see the lighter sides of situations and encounters as they occur. It is a daily, moment-by-moment alertness to the possibility of seeing the funny, the humorous, and the laughable. This spirit of lightness serves as a lens through which educators can view their worlds and help others to see their own worlds differently. Fundamentally, an attitude of humour and laughter is incompatible with the experiences of burnout, rust-out, and low educator motivation that we discuss throughout this chapter.

Sharing humour or lightheartedness appropriately in any educational experience can be challenging. In in-person environments, in settings of both higher education and professional development, educators must always remain mindful of their professional presentation and learner sensitivities. There is always the possibility of misinterpretation (especially with attempts at humour). Timing is important since something that might seem to be funny at a time when a learning group is getting to know one another might lose its amusement during a time of stress, such as when learners are required to pass a test. The same is true in online environments. When communication is text based, the visual cues and tones of voice that can help learners to interpret an educator’s intended meaning are absent. In an online milieu, the audience might be less known to the educator and peers, making it more difficult to judge what might be appropriate or inappropriate for that group.

When educators use humour and lightheartedness appropriately, there are several benefits. The first benefit is that communication among participants can be enhanced. Leacock concluded “but most of all, we laugh” (1938, p. 5). Educators who demonstrate a sense of humour also convey messages of openness and positivity to learners. Learners can view an educator who sees the positive in things, laughs easily, and smiles a lot as the kind of person with whom they are willing to share their learning goals and personal challenges. A smile, real or virtual, unlocks the doors to honest and meaningful exchanges. Being open to humour conveys that you are friendly, human, real, and approachable, the kind of person whom one can trust. Humour has an unmasking quality that allows for more personal and in-depth communication.

The second benefit of humour in education is that it promotes social presence, which occurs when members of a learning group project their individual personalities and develop interpersonal relationships with one another. Sharing lighter moments is part of creating a bond between educators and learners and among learners. When you spend time with others laughing and joking, it tells them that you want to share something of yourself with them, and you get to know another part of them too. This makes you friends in a way. It gives you a sense of solidarity.

Dean and Major (2008) support this belief as they emphasize that humour helps to establish relationships. The value of humour resides not in its capacity to alter physical reality but in its capacity for affective or psychological change that enhances the humanity of an experience. In particular, they point to the value of humour for teamwork, emotional management, and maintenance of human connections. You are acknowledging a person when you laugh appropriately. You are saying “yes, I understand what you are saying.” Baughman (1974) describes humour as a “social lubricant.” It eases social situations and promotes smooth and comfortable social interactions. Humour helps to establish relationships, decrease fears, encourage trust, increase friendship, and decrease social distance as it invites others to come close.

A third benefit of a lighthearted attitude is psychological. Humour itself is one of the good things of life, and it can ease tension in relationships and create moments of positivity. Humour provides a change of pace, injecting energy and optimism into the learning environment. A lighthearted attitude helps to relieve anxiety and tension. It is a positive outlet for frustration and lightens the heaviness of problematic situations. Humour is a tonic that invigorates, making an online class less drab and much more human. Gruner says of the psychological value of humour that “human societies treasure laughter and whatever can produce it. Without laughter, everyday living becomes drab and lifeless; life would seem hardly human at all without it” (1978, p. 1). As Archibald writes, “humour in the class room is like spice in the food—very necessary and important to add flavor and create interest” (2017, p. 118). Granato (2018) concludes that humour facilitates learning and challenges online teachers to take a risk and use “humour pedagogy.”

Technology provides us with access to humorous content on almost any topic. In online settings, Archibald (2017) suggests, have learners submit a clip or funny cartoon relevant to a course topic. In in-person settings, educators can invite learners to share lighthearted items. Asking them to respond to peer submissions in a lighthearted way (or demonstrating it yourself) can perpetuate positivity.

Educators who move out of their comfort zones and use humour model a way for learners to add humour to their interactions as well. When educators inject positive words and funny examples into their lectures, presentations, commentaries, and online posts (or even if they smile or have a colourful background for their videos), doing so lets learners know that they appreciate humour and lightness, and it gives learners permission to respond in kind.

Amusing stories are also teaching tools that can help learners to apply theory to practice. Stories often help learners to achieve both cognitive domain and affective domain learning outcomes as they appeal to the emotions related to a topic. If the story has a funny angle, then it can be especially memorable and bring humour to the learning environment. Movies are essentially long stories, and they can provide powerful support for learning activities. Similarly, YouTube is a rich source of amusing short videos. Educators and learners can locate, share, and discuss them in most learning experiences. When learners have enjoyed and appreciated the inclusion of amusing stories in their learning experiences, they might be inclined to add a dash of humour or fun to their assignments or projects, furthering the goal of learning with positivity.

Sharing humour appropriately in educational experiences can nurture human connections. It does not need to take excessive time or effort by the educator. As we mentioned, it might require educators and learners alike to move out of their comfort zones and embrace new challenges. In doing so, educators can develop a greater repertoire of teaching strategies and gain a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment. Humour is not a skill that robots possess; it is a human action and interaction. In the following strategy, we share insights from psychologist Maurice Elias (2015), who encourages educators to begin a process of cultivating humour by laughing at themselves.

CONCLUSION

This chapter encompasses ways of thinking and approaches that educators might appreciate when feelings of low motivation, rust-out, and even burnout emerge. We shared ideas that provide insight into maintaining motivation. Engagement can make the difference between an excellent educator and a robotic teacher. As we have emphasized throughout this book, the human connections are what count. Attending to the little things, affirming the value of learners, and sharing humour appropriately are just a few of the many ways in which educators can connect with learners.

In Askinazi’s (2004) words, “connection is a gift” in human relationships, and it can be transcendent for educators and learners. When they connect in meaningful ways, a cyclical process of positive, joyful invigoration can develop. This circle of transcendence can be a powerful motivator and reminder to educators everywhere about why they chose to teach. We close with a poem by Perry (2009) that attempts to capture, within the limitation of words, how transcendent the essential human connections that we have written about throughout this book can be for all people in a relationship.

The Circle of Transcendence
Sometimes as a teacher,
when I think about
the vastness and complexity of the world,
I am overwhelmed.
I feel so unimportant,
so insignificant,
so powerless.

Then,
I meet you,
and by creating a small connection,
I make you feel valued.

The result is a wonder.
When you feel important,
so do I.

It is so simple.
It is so profound.

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We extend our sincere thanks to Pamela Holway at Athabasca University Press for her wisdom, inspiration, and guidance throughout the process of creating this book.