Welcome Back, Gamers: Notes on YouTube, Instruction, and Entertainment

I’d consider myself a young professor, my actual age notwithstanding. But I’m young enough that YouTube and its content creators have been an integral part of my life for longer than they haven’t. And YouTube is just becoming a larger part of my teaching every year. The platform is already recognized as an educational tool, with more and more research showing its potential in supporting student learning, engagement, and success in catering to different learning styles by delivering content in a visual, audio, and interactive format. Long story short, YouTube is already a boon to instruction. But there’s one missing thing I haven’t really been able to describe clearly yet, one last piece of the puzzle to teaching on YouTube that I find deeply important to furthering student participation and retention.

Last week on the RIPS-SIS blog, discussions arose concerning best practices for asynchronous and hybrid instruction, and something I noticed my younger colleagues touching on was a need to be entertaining when uploading asynchronous lectures. Now, I realize this can be a hot take sometimes. Many educators believe that trying to make their lectures entertaining lessens the lessons, somehow making mockery of the educational content. Others believe it sets bad precedent, locking them into a teaching style for the rest of their careers. While these concerns have their place in the conversation, they fail to take into account the active choice to pay attention students have to make when consuming our online educational content.

My colleagues on the RIPS-SIS comment board are right. We need to be entertaining as educators, especially if we’re going to be posting lectures on platforms like YouTube that already have way more fun and engaging content waiting in the suggested videos that appear right beside the lectures as they play. Posting asynchronous lectures inherently comes with that risk of losing student attention, not to mention the risk of students speeding up the video, looking through captions for the information they need to succeed on their assignments or exams, and any other tactic they can come up with to avoid sitting through the lecture as they should.

We have to make them laugh. We have to make them laugh like they do for their favorite content creators, like they do for the silly things they put on as background noise at the end of the day. Though we might not like it, we have to entertain them. Even just a little bit.

How do we do that? I don’t mean how do we be funny; I mean, what level and style of humor can allow us to impart the necessary information without effectively taking away from the educational content itself? What measures of relatability, storytelling, and humor can we incorporate to get our desired student engagement results? How can we be less Mr. Beast and more SciShow?

In trying to answer this question, I came across this incredible article posted in the European Journal of Humour Research called A Multimodal Analysis of Humour as an Engagement Strategy in YouTube Research Dissemination Videos. Mouthful of a title as it is, it’s particularly reflective about the different ways humor can be created in educational YouTube Videos, from the scriptwriting, to the transitions used for visual aid content, and even the use of well-timed pauses. It even contemplates the future of the platform, and how humorous educational content will need to evolve alongside possible new functions of the platform. It’s one of the nerdiest articles I’ve ever read, and I adore the dedication to dissecting humor for the betterment of all educators.

We may need to be entertaining for our asynchronous students, sometimes against our will, but in this article exists guidance for that. And with even the smallest of changes, we can make sure our students stay even the tiniest bit more engaged, and can hold onto their motivation and incentive to learn with us on their screens.

BTW, here’s the full citation and the link!

Bernad-Mecho, E. & Giron-Garcia, C. (2023) A multimodal analysis of humor as an engagement strategy in YouTube research dissemination videos. The European Journal of Humour Research, 11(1), 46-66. Available at: https://europeanjournalofhumour.org/ejhr/article/view/760.