Teaching | Fiona | Fiona Doherty philosophy

Lecturing

2023 Philosophy of Perception, University of Notre Dame

2019 Philosophy of Perception, University of Stirling

2018 Philosophy of Mind, University of Stirling

2018 Philosophy: What’s it all about?, University of Stirling

2018 Logic 1, University of Edinburgh

2017 Ethics, University of Edinburgh

2015 Theories, University of Cambridge

Teaching with Memes

Guide to meme pedagogy:

Memes are a highly adaptable powerful resource for many different teaching contexts. They are particularly suited to the two of the most difficult teaching environments: large scale lectures and digital online learning. Despite the fact that most of us employ images while teaching, it is still uncommon to use memes. This is perhaps because memes are perceived as exclusively belonging to another generation or of being intrinsically informal or simply because of unfamiliarity with memes. However, I think that there are many untapped advantages to becoming at least minimally meme literate.

First, memes are highly visual and, by their nature, simple modes of carrying many diverse and layered connotations. This makes them useful learning tools since they are ideal at providing bridges between old and new material. Secondly, they are apt to facilitate different kinds of learning by providing supplementary visual cues and alternative associations which makes them able to extend their reach to a population of diverse student learners in comparison with exclusively text-based teaching content. Thirdly, I even think memes can help to combat the growing problem of student isolation and imposter syndrome by providing students with a bridge between restricted academic code and their own linguistic norms and speech codes. Memes can be used to break down barriers between lecturers and students by appealing to a common stock of knowledge and enjoyment. Finally, memes are free resources, easily available and easy to create and tailor.

What is a meme?

For the uninitiated, a meme is a joke consisting of an image with text. The main purpose of the content of the text as well

as the image is to denote a cultural tidbit

of information and often a previous meme. Memes are not static but evolve and reference each other. The original memes parodied the form of motivational posters familiar to most of us from school.

These lead to a genre of called

`de-motivational posters' such as:

After there was a proliferation of this genre expanded to include all unexpected or funny images of this form as well as demotivational ones.

This also included self referring memes which is not surprising since one of the most defining elements of a meme is its `in-joke' reference to its own ancestors.

From here the meme broke free even of the characteristic form of the motivational poster to increasingly generalise to picture/image references we recognise as memes today (a simple google will provide a veritable zoology).

To give you an idea of how these come about let's follow the story of one of my favourite memes: Hide the Pain Harold. In 2011 a Facepunch user posted stock photos of András István Arató, a retired Hungarian electrical engineer and stock photo model. The following month several facebook groups sprung up around these pictures and in 2014 they appeared on 4chan where users invented a fictional account of the character as an unhappy old man working as a stock photography model and from here the name Hide-the-Pain Harold. The meme now references any suppressed pain and/or discomfort.

How to make your own memes

See these websites for step by step guide for how to create your own memes tailored to your teaching content. Ensure that the image you are using has the appropriate copyright. For the best quality images you can always use photoshop if you are confident of recreating the right look.

Common meme pitfalls to avoid

Don't simply appropriate any old meme. Know your meme first, a forced meme is like a forced joke. You can now easily look up the genealogy of most memes, for example here: https://knowyourmeme.com/
Don't spend too much time explaining your meme. Memes are facilitators of learning not objects of learning, you wouldn't explain a picture.
Don't use too many. Less is more.
Don't put it in if you think you can't pull it off. Judge whether to use a meme just like with a joke in a lecture.
Don't use controversial memes or memes at the expense of any ethnic or social group. Even if they are funny, measured and appropriate, these are alienating and unprofessional.
Don't generate poor quality memes. Use a standard meme maker such as those references above if you are not confident.

Top tips for teaching with memes

Here are my top tips for teaching using memes with some examples from my own lecture slides.

Use classical memes, some memes are so embedded they are known by most people on the internet and some are very niche. Aim to use and adapt widely known memes so that everyone is in on the joke.
Adapt the meme as little as possible. The less you adapt to make it relevant to your material the more powerful the joke, the less forced it looks and the more it maintains its connections to its other references and ancestors.

Stick to memes that you find funny. Part of the power of the meme is to share a joke with your students, this ensures the students are connecting with you and also makes you less likely to misuse the meme.
Use a meme theme. Good memes proliferate quickly and for each classical meme there is a family of associated memes with an order of evolution. You can use this to your advantage by building up the (adapted) meme following its order of evolution as you build up your example or conceptual explanation, rather than using many different unrelated memes.

Use memes to target the points in the lecture where students are the least engaged to boost attention by changing activity and medium (roughly at each 20min mark since 20min is an average attention span). A good meme in the right place can be just as effective at re-engaging flagging student attention as a funny anecdote or interesting historical fact. Since such anecdotes are few and far between in most disciplines (was there ever a funny story about Frege's hierarchy of senses?) memes offer an infinite prolific and adaptable resource (almost like Frege's hierarchy of senses).

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