A Twitchy Education, or Learning through Livestreaming

One night, while trying to think of ways to improve how I deliver the unscripted parts of my lessons, I booted up a game on my PC. After creating my character, I checked my computer’s microphone and started to stream the feed from my monitor.

There was no one to chat with on the livestream, but I talked aloud anyway, filling up the silence with descriptions of the game world and play-by-play narrations of my in-game actions.

This was my unscripted practice. My improv.

Things became ridiculous once I ran out of ways to describe how lost I was.

At the time, I felt that same awkwardness of a lesson gone awry: things weren’t going as planned. But my livestream continued on, as did my character, and finally I made my way off the previous game map.

I wasn’t just relaxing with a game after work. Through livestreaming, I was engaging in learning — learning to talk things through, to work through conversational discomfort and to think through my own thinking.

When you’re trying to learn something new, action often trumps theory. Learning about musical modes might make you a better musician, but it doesn’t mean you’ll be able to shred on the guitar.

Not all knowledge has an actionable component. A first-rate music theorist can write songs and have others perform them, for example. But learning through doing is especially important with physical and creative skills. Muscle memory begets competence, and creativity — much like computational thinking — is a skill that can be honed through repetition.

For solo learners, or even teachers, it can be difficult to find the motivation needed for such deliberate practice. In higher education, where many schools are moving to online- and distance-based learning, it can be challenging for professors to ascertain students’ levels of engagement. How can students practice actively while also benefiting from the uncertainties of real-time discussion?

Livestreaming using platforms such as YouTube and Twitch, or through video conferencing options like Zoom or the LMS-friendly BigBlueButton, can be a way to facilitate performative learning, allowing students to learn through improvisation, work through metacognition via self-correction, practice without getting derailed by failure and get real-time feedback.

While not without its detractions, livestreaming can be a useful tool for many learners — and in more fields than you might think.

Livestreaming is when you record video in real time, often narrating an action all the while. Some livestreams involve gaming, such as with “Let’s Play” videos. Other livestreams might feature YouTubers talking with their fans, or commercial feeds of entertainment shows or sporting events. Anyone with a fast enough internet connection can start livestreaming, which means that livestreams can be unpredictable and span all topics and languages.

Twitch is a platform often used by gamers for livestreaming their playthroughs, as its initial focus was solely on games. But Twitch can have an educational twist: just as gamers stream their play, so can artists stream their digital painting or coders stream their code. In fact, there are a number of programmers and coders who livestream their work, “livecoding” and showcasing their development environments to a rapt online audience.

For students learning how to code, livecoding can be especially useful. They can tune into the streams of skilled programmers to watch and assess coding at a professional level. Stephen Wolfram, for example, holds livecoding sessions on Twitch to showcase features of the Wolfram Language during his “live CEOing” sessions.

Watching streams allows students to assess decision making from the outside. In the case of learning how to code, it can prompt questions like “Why’d he set things up that way?” or “How can I use that function?” In this way, livecoding can function as an impromptu video lesson.

By having students livestream their own code, livecoding can be used for active rather than passive learning. Here are a few ways livecoding could be incorporated into lessons:

• During a student’s beginning stages of learning to code, a teacher could point out coding issues midstream, giving personalized feedback and performing assessment outside of a test-taking environment.
• For intermediate learners, peers could get involved. They could offer suggestions and feedback, helping the livecoding student work through issues.
• Advanced learners could become teachers themselves, either peer-teaching to their classmates or educating an outside audience.
• For students of all levels, simply narrating the act of coding could be a reflective exercise, allowing them to work through processes of assessment, monitoring and overall self-evaluation.

Metacognition, or thinking about thinking, is strongly utilized during the livecoding process, as is the softer skill of communication. Much as an improv actor must reach for words out of the ether, so must a livecoder navigate issues of having too much dead air, or of trying to express their thoughts when someone offers a surprising question or idea.

Livecoding isn’t the only educational use for livestreaming. Many artists can benefit from streaming — drawing for an audience, for example, or practicing making music. Viewers can enjoy watching a craftsperson at work, while student artists can take in alternate views of their crafts.

For language learners, the benefits are obvious. Watching foreign livestreams is excellent listening practice, particularly since streamers talk more naturally and off the cuff than in broadcast news or scripted TV. Likewise, streaming while narrating in a foreign language is speaking practice akin to holding a conversation — even if the only participant is the streamer.

That said, just as livestreaming holds value, so can it be unhelpful or even detrimental for learners. If a livestream is public, outside viewers are free to watch and comment. This can be inspiring, enlightening… or terrible.

A bad actor can derail a student’s progress, either through purposefully hurtful comments or unhelpful advice. Critique from strangers can become painful, rather than merely uncomfortable. In this sense, livestreaming through public platforms is best for older students, and for students who are more secure in the foundational knowledge of their disciplines.

For younger students, livestreaming might be best suited to a private video-conference platform. This could even be done through a video-conferencing tool embedded in a school’s LMS. Many private tools offer screenshare options, perfect for simulating the livestreaming process. The key is to mimic group sharing while still maintaining an online focus.

For a smaller class or for group work, teachers could switch control of the video conference from student to student, allowing each student to share their work through a private “livestream.” The benefits of talking through work and responding to viewers on the fly would still be present, but the possibility of a class derailment would be far less likely.

While Twitch doesn’t allow for private livestreams, YouTube has an option to make livestreams “unlisted.” While this doesn’t totally privatize the stream — anyone with a link can view it — it nonetheless offers possibilities for more open-ended livestreams within a walled garden. For Google-based schools, students will already have Google accounts to connect to YouTube.

Livestreaming isn’t for everyone. There are technological wrinkles to iron out, and the act of talking to one’s peers can be paralyzing for shy students, or for students who have trouble communicating their thoughts. But if a class is up for it, talking through the learning process and taking in outside feedback can not only broaden a student’s knowledge, it can also be an empowering way to discover their own thought processes and to practice transferable skills.

About the blogger:

Jesika Brooks

Jesika Brooks is an editor and bookworm with a Master of Library and Information Science degree. She works in the field of higher education as an educational technology librarian, assisting with everything from setting up Learning Management Systems to teaching students how to use edtech tools. A lifelong learner herself, she has always been fascinated by the intersection of education and technology. She edits the Tech-Based Teaching blog (and always wants to hear from new voices!).