Teaching with Twitch – The Value of Terrible Ideas

Photo by Caspar Camille Rubin on Unsplash

See what happened when an NYU professor streamed his class about Twitch on Twitch. NYU Game Center professor Robert Yang reports on his experience teaching a class using Twitch.

There are a number of interesting angles revealed in this experiment using the Twitch platform for teaching. First, it’s a good example of an educator using an available tool and incorporating into a pedagogical approach. Of course, this is an alternative to the tools made particularly for teaching and supported by universities. Appropriating available tools like this can expand the tool set and allow for experimentation.

Second, holding the class on twitch revealed just how many conventions traditional online classes (and on campus classes for that matter) carry with them. Yang had to explain some of these conventions to the non-students who wondered into his stream.

Third, I like the idea of trying something that the instructor anticipated might be terrible because this can lead to some unexpected innovation. New practices have to begin somewhere and new paths are seldom smooth. So, pursuing ideas that seem terrible at the outset may have some promise.

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