Humor as a Learning Aid in Medical Education

Abstract

Attention span in a lecture is roughly 15 minutes. After this has been seen that no. of students paying attention begins to drop dramatically leading to loss in retention of lecture material. Objective of present study was to examine the effectiveness of humor when used as an intervention. The present Interventional, Randomized control trial study was carried out on medical students of fourth Semester, of RMCH, Bareilly, which has total ninety students. Class was divided into two groups, Group A and Group B by simple random sampling using lottery method, consisting of 45 students each. For both groups four lectures each were delivered on same topic, with a difference that in group A no intervention used while in group B humor was used as an intervention. Record of class attendance was maintained in both the groups and post lecture tests were conducted. Chi-Square test was applied for statistical analysis. In group B not only the attendance of students increased from class 1 to class 4 but was also more as compared to group A in each class and the difference was found to be statistically significant . Post lecture test scores showed that in group A there was no significant difference in marks obtained by students in class 1 and class 4, however in group B in which humor was used it was observed that in class 4 percentage of students getting marks above 50% increased as compared to class 1. We concluded that humor not only increases interest but also promotes learning.