As the most important conference for management and organization scientists worldwide, the AOM’s Annual Meeting from August 9-13 2019 in Boston brought together numerous researchers of different fields: More than 70 teachers in higher education participated in the workshop held by the Institute for Managing Sustainability. The workshop’s aim was to make use of the positive effects of humor on the learning success of students. Using humor in the classroom is an effective and innovative approach for capturing and maintaining students’ attention and triggers positive emotions, thereby increasing learning effects.

One focus of the workshop was the presentation of the WU education project “Humor and Sustainability”, which is held by André Martinuzzi and Florian Findler each summer term. Instead of writing term papers, the students themselves apply humor and design scripts in the spirit of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, in which scientifically correct content on topical sustainability issues is presented in a humorous and appealing manner.

Moreover, the workshop participants were provided with the necessary tools to purposefully apply humor in their own classroom and in course design. For that, the teachers received insights in the mechanisms of humor and their utilization in multicultural classes.