Teacher vs YouTuber
“I want to be a YouTuber” is not what any parent wants to hear from their kids, and it’s an open secret that YouTube causes burnout. It’s hard to build a following and even harder to keep one, and you’re essentially a free-lance contractor at the mercy of the algorithm. There’s an increasing number of professionals who have day-jobs - doctors, lawyers, photographers, film-makers, who talk about those jobs or their hobbies on YouTube. I fall into that category - I’m a microbiologist and full-time science educator and now… a YouTuber?
Last month I was invited to present at a national series of seminars on the impact of wining teaching awards, where I talked briefly about the videos I make here on my YouTube channel. One of the questions I received was simply
“Why?”
You don’t get a lot of downtime in teaching, so where was I finding the energy or motivation to make YouTube videos? I’m quite new to the platform and have only been posting videos consistently for the last 6 months. The odds of building a channel that goes viral are not in my favour, and I doubt it will ever get to a point where I can quit my day job. I won’t have enough subscribers or watch hours to earn a cent through YouTube for the foreseeable future, so why am I doing this? Learning all of the skills needed to make YouTube videos and run a YouTube channel has transformed my ability to do my day job in very real ways.
Grabbing their attention
The YouTube algorithm is ruthless and grabbing viewers’ attention - subscribers or not - is a bloodbath. YouTubers need every trick in the book to increase audience engagement and this is the same issue teachers are dealing with. Every video has a naturally declining viewer retention curve, which mirrors what happens in our classrooms, just at a much faster pace. Most teachers just assume students will show up to class on time and ready to learn, but that’s unfortunately no longer our reality. How to improve student engagement is an open question in all of education, there’s never been more distractions, especially if you’re studying by yourself online.
YouTubers have been dealing with this conundrum since the platform was invented and have a long list of “hacks”:
Catchy or “clickbait” titles
Visually striking thumbnail pictures
Starting each video with the most attention-grabbing footage, music, or stories…
These are all routine strategies used on YouTube, and there’s no reason why teachers can’t rename their classes with catchy titles, use more graphics and striking imagery in your online courses, and open each lesson with thought-provoking questions from the field.
Holding their attention
Grabbing someone’s attention is very different from holding it over a a period of time. The first 30 seconds to a minute of each video is how YouTube judges if a video is “worth sticking around for” - because viewers are strategic with their time - click in and click out. Now hopefully the motivation for students to stick around for a lesson is different than a viewer looking to be entertained on YouTube, but the two overlap more than we think (and possibly more than we like).
How do you get people to watch to the end? There are gimmicks and tricks to this - announcing prizes or giveaways at the end - but as they say in film school, story is king. If your video has a compelling story with some opening drama that is only resolved at the end, then it’s possibly more compelling to stick around. I’ve certainly used more story-telling narratives as part of my lesson plans after starting YouTube, and I think it forces me to be more explicit in my learning design. In teaching we also have the dangling carrot that is assessment, and you can use Constructive Alignment - interspersing quiz questions throughout your class that tie in with the learning objectives or learning activities - to keep students engaged.
Becoming a Multi-hyphenate
Just like anything in life, there are the haves and have-nots on YouTube. The biggest names have a production team of videographers and editors, but the vast majority of channels are one-person operations.
The technical side of video production requires YouTubers to become multi-hyphenate creators and honestly teachers are in the same boat when it comes to designing courses. Making custom graphics, animations, short videos, websites, are all skills that YouTubers have to develop to make their work seem more appealing and dynamic, and teachers should take the same approach. Of course you can’t do everything or learn everything at once, but having a swiss-army knife of skills in your teaching toolkit can’t hurt, especially as it relates to online teaching.
Pick one thing and slowly get better it over a few semesters - for me it was making videos - I’m still not great at this, but it’s a lot better than my first attempt for sure - but for you it could be making custom graphics for your courses. Or figuring out sound design and editing, maybe starting a podcast? Or just editing websites so that your online courses are easy to navigate. You don’t have to do everything yourself forever, but becoming a multi-hyphenate creator or teacher lets you try a bit of everything - so you know what lane suits you best.
Different Perspectives
When teaching a topic for the first time, the path of least resistance is to teach it in the same way you were taught. Your teachers were probably great, but their communication approach or style can be like putting on someone else’s bespoke tailored jacket - an awkward fit all around. YouTubers are all too aware of this because before publishing any video they need to do the rounds - search for all of the keywords relevant to their topic, see what else is out there and what the level of interest is, and try to find a new angle. Teachers can take the same approach and search the online archives for videos on our topic, watch back last year’s lecture recordings, or peer-observe another teacher’s class.
Strength in numbers
There is a limit on how many new ways you can think to explain any given topic, and most YouTubers fall into a creative rut. They either keep making the same type of video again and again - the ones that their initial audiences were attracted to, or they start second channels focusing on completely different topics altogether. One way around this is to form communities or collaborations with other YouTubers - and pool their resources and potential audiences to keep the momentum going.
Teachers need collaborations too, and we all benefit from observing the teaching practices of our peers. What happens inside your classroom often stays inside your classroom, so how can you connect with other teachers? Again, since starting this YouTube channel I’ve made so many more connections with teachers all across the world. My channel has a small digital foot print but has had an outsized impact on my professional networks. I know that the videos I’ve made on teaching have led to invitations to speak at international conferences, join journal editorial boards, or committees on teaching and learning - and right now I’m travelling for work. I’ve been invited to present a workshop on teaching and learning, and deliver the keynote address to other national teaching award winners - a huge honour, that probably would have never happened if I didn’t set up this small YouTube channel.
Now hopefully I don’t let the organisers down and I do a good job - I’ll try to post a link to my talk so you can see how it went.
Jack.
