HUMOUR Erasmus Project

Project Title

HUMOUR

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Open and distance learning; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

In the everyday educational process, teachers meet very often the lack of students’ motivation and bad concentration in the classroom. Students are not fully engaged due to uninteresting lessons and too many facts and information to learn and memorize.
Based on the article “School is So Boring: High-Stakes Testing and Boredom at an Urban Middle School”, boredom may influence students’ behaviour and disposition in the classroom. More recent research finds that a boring school experience leads some students to cut classes (Fallis & Opotow 2003) and exacerbates students’ risk of dropping out of high school (Dow, 2007). A study on the state of learning at an urban school suggests that some students fail at their attempts to be “good students” and become academically disengaged because they rejected frequent “boring and meaningless” classroom activities at their school (Rubin, 2007). https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ957120.pdf

Teachers have a big challenge to fight students’ boredom in the classroom caused by mentioned problems. Despite the teachers’ multifunctional skills and knowledge, many of them lack abilities to motivate students and still use old-fashioned methods of teaching. They have a fear of changes in teaching and those who are willing to do some innovations in the class usually have difficulties in finding information sources with good practices.

These growing concerns provided the motivation to develop and implement this project, introducing a new dimension into teaching activity, that would relax and delight all the intervenients: teachers and students (ISCED 2: 12-15yo).

The mentioned target group will acquire the following knowledge and skills:
1 – Teachers
– Researching skills, analytical skills,
– ICT skills,
– Improve teaching competences in order to be able to determine the functions and the place of the humour in the teaching as a means of achieving optimal
communication, develop new ideas and sources with funny contents,
– Humorous examples available at one place, adjustable to the lessons and the students, used as a tool to stimulate creativity, motivation and stress relief

In addition, Teachers will use our project for (benefits summed byMcKeachie and Svinicki (2006)):
– An increase in class attendance
– An increase in test performance.
– An increase in interest in learning.
– The creation of a positive social and emotional learning environment.
– The creation of a common psychological bond between students and the teacher.

2 – Students
– Drama and soft skills (use of humorous content, demonstration and transformation of the voice, movement) for active involvement in teaching.
– Ability to use drama techniques and soft skills when presenting comical content in class.
– Strengthening emotional and creative-critical thinking;

Also, students will be using our project results to be able to:
– improve academic performance
– increase critical and divergent thinking.
– reduce anxiety and stress when dealing with difficult material.

Therefore, we intend with this project to give an answer to the identified needs of the aforementioned target groups, through a holistic approach:
– Teachers don’t perceive student’s boredom and have a hard time motivating and engaging students: teachers are the ones who can most directly impact
students’ experience of boredom by designing classroom environments that either promote or reduce the occurrence of this emotion.
https://d-nb.info/1037311957/34
– Students can’t concentrate in the classrooms: Research shows that students find it difficult to concentrate in the classrooms because they don’t understand the
instructions; they don’t know why they are doing the activity; the activity is boring; the activity is too easy or difficult; they are tired; teachers can’t get their
attention. https://bit.ly/2TlV0IQ

The main aim of this project is to improve the socio-emotional climate in the classroom since it is endangered by low concentration, bad motivation and boredom of students due to the teachers’ lack of abilities and knowledge to motivate students, uninteresting contents and lessons, old-fashioned teaching methods and slow educational reforms.

In order to reach this aim, the following results will be produced:
– Manual of Good Practices – how to use humour in the classroom
– HUMOUR Training – Training for teachers
– Guide for students on the improvement of social and transversal skills using humour
– Online bite-size learning education resource

HUMOUR project will be distributed among 6 partners from 5 different countries. We planned a total of 300 students to participate in the project implementation. In addition, a total of 10 teachers/country promoters will participate in training activities and 30 teachers will be involved in the project development and implementation of project results and outcomes.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 161157 Eur

Project Coordinator

FONDATSIA EVROPEISKI CENTER ZA INOVATSII OBRAZOVANIE NAUKA I CULTURA & Country: BG

Project Partners

• JU OS “Stari Ilijas”, Ilijas
• SMART IDEA Igor Razbornik s.p.
• Svetovanje in pomoč pri poslovnih storitvah, Klara Ramšak s.p.
• Turk Egitim-Sen Konya 2 Nolu Sube Baskanligi
• JumpIN Hub – Associação para a Inovação e Empreendedorismo