When Joshua Melko, an assistant professor of chemistry at the University of North Florida, read his student evaluations from last semester, he was pleasantly surprised. His evaluation rating was higher, the class GPA was 0.2 points above average, and 34 of his roughly 100 students voiced appreciation for what, by then, had become a staple in his general chemistry course: ProfMelko’s live Twitch streams.
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When Joshua Melko, an assistant professor of chemistry at the University of North Florida, read his student evaluations from last semester, he was pleasantly surprised. His evaluation rating was higher, the class GPA was 0.2 points above average, and 34 of his roughly 100 students voiced appreciation for what, by then, had become a staple in his general chemistry course: ProfMelko’s live Twitch streams.
A few years ago, a fantasy football expert whom Melko followed began streaming on Twitch — a platform traditionally used to live-stream video games such as StarCraft II and League of Legends — and, by the summer of 2017, the professor saw the opportunity for himself. Students could watch him explain concepts in real time. They could ask questions in the live comment feed. If he was struggling to explain something, he could pull up videos or slides. It was, he felt, uncharted educational territory.
“I was like, this is a pretty different feel,” Melko said. “This could be a teaching tool.”
Melko isn’t alone. As gamers have joined Twitch en masse — the platform has more than 15 million daily users — a slow stream of educators has followed, with professors live-streaming supplemental office hours, exam reviews, snow-day lectures, research projects, and lecture preparations. And unlike Google Hangouts or Zoom, Twitch streams automatically record and post videos to users’ pages upon completion.
At George Mason University, where Michael Neary, a computer-science instructor, does occasional streams, students thought “it was just the professor trying to connect with the youth,” Neary said. But it didn’t seem like a stretch for the 24-year-old instructor. He had watched streams of Hearthstone, a strategic card game similar to Magic: The Gathering, as an undergraduate and figured more flexibility with office hours would benefit both students and himself.
On Melko’s campus, in Jacksonville, Fla., many of his students commuted, in addition to working 20 to 30 hours each week, he said. Expecting them to return for one or two questions seemed far-fetched, so he downloaded the Open Broadcaster Software, set up a camera, and started streaming. By the spring semester of 2018, Melko had set up weekly office-hour streams, in addition to his regularly scheduled sessions. Now he has more than 500 Twitch followers — impressive for an educator but minuscule compared with professional gamers like Ninja, who has more than 14 million followers and earned close to $10 million last year.
Using a video-game platform in the context of higher education may seem bizarre, but Jessy Lemieux, a chemistry instructor at San Bernardino Valley College, said video games have long been at the forefront of technology in communications and art. Investors will always put money into entertainment products, he said, and people will always find new ways to use the platforms.
And educators have long recontextualized technology for their own needs. YouTube, Microsoft PowerPoint, Minecraft, Excel — none were intended for the school-related functions used today, said Chris Haskell, a clinical assistant professor of educational technology at Boise State University.
“I mean, go back to the chalkboard,” Haskell said. “It was a coal-mine tool originally, and it made its way out of the coal mine and into the factory. And then from the factory into education. This is not new. … It’s that experimental, scientific approach that most educators have always used. It doesn’t matter what the tool is; if we can find value in it, we will use it.”
A screengrab of a Twitch broadcast by Joshua Melko, a chemistry professor at the U. of North FloridaTwitch
For Twitch, the influx of education started with its introduction of the IRL — In Real Life — section, in 2016, which brought both controversy and an opportunity to stream happenings of everyday life. Within the world of learning, hundreds of streamers — some amateur, some holding Ph.D.s — shared lectures on architecture, astronomy, auto mechanics, chemistry, history, physics, programming, and watchmaking. The Knowledge Fellowship, a Twitch community of more than 60 streamers, furthers that movement by sharing “peer-reviewed information on a variety of topics in a casual, highly interactive environment.”
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Jason Steffen, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, has more than 7,000 Twitch followers and uses the platform to practice future lectures. At the University of Michigan at Dearborn, Eric Charnesky, a computer-science lecturer, wanted to supplement his rapid teaching style — “I acknowledge that I talk fast,” he said — with a stream students could return to after class. One University of Vermont professor, Josh Bongard, streams lectures and has used the live comment stream to crowdsource commands for robotics research.
Streams are public, and usernames provide anonymity for students, which “kind of took away the stigma of being the only one in class raising your hand and asking a question,” Neary said. Peter Bui, an associate teaching professor of computer science at the University of Notre Dame, said his weekly Twitch office hours give the more reserved students, who rarely ask questions in person, a voice.
“No one knew what to expect when I started using it,” Bui said. “And it turned out to be a very positive experience.”
That anonymity can act as a shield, though, and it’s allowed harassment on Twitch, especially toward women and people of color, to fester. Individual streamers can set guidelines for what’s allowed in the chat, including banning users who spew inappropriate language, and Neary suggested professors use undergraduate teaching assistants to moderate streams. Even without outright racism or sexism, that anonymity is something of a double-edged sword. “You’re free to get unruly in the chat,” Neary said.
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Some universities also have Wi-Fi settings that slow down platforms, including Twitch, because of the high internet speeds necessary for streaming, an issue Lemieux faced. His other struggle was familiar to plenty of video-game streamers: “I was on there almost all the time I wasn’t in class,” he said. “It was a big chunk of time. That’s one of the reasons why I scaled it back a little bit, too. I needed a little extra time for myself.”
Lemieux suggested starting slow — one Twitch office hours every week or two. Or, like Melko, test-run it with a review session. The initial foray might be slow, Lemieux said, but any way professors can meet students where they are is moving in the right direction. “They might not show up the first couple minutes” of the live feed, he said. But if you stream it, they will come.
