2019 AIN World Conference at Stony Brook

The first half of this workshop will deliver content and the second half will be interactive.  We will begin with an overview of humor research and show how humor can be most effectively applied to STEM education by using a framework of cognitive load theory.  We then show how Deliberate Innovation (including behavioral economics and social psychology) can be leveraged to extend this framework and apply improvisation and storytelling to improve technical communication.   Finally we present a general methodology based on simulation which allows new improv games to be developed in the service of innovation.  

The workshop will then shift into an interactive mode where we will demonstrate, with participant involvement, new structures and games based on this work. We will explain how these structures were designed, and illustrate how to create other games that leverage the same techniques. The overall objective is to provide tools to participants who want to become more comfortable with applied improv methods to generate effective humor in a STEM context.