The Future of Education

Edition 14

Accepted Abstracts

Examining Twitch as a Multimodal Learning Platform

Rachel Sage, American University of Kuwait (Kuwait)

Abstract

Twitch’s dynamic multimodal platform stands out as a rich learning environment that fosters participation (Duncan, 2010; Gandolfi, 2016). From its inception, Twitch’s collaborative platform has been used as a mentoring tool for gamers seeking to improve their game play. This would generally mirror a traditional learning environment where the expert streams while the novices join to learn from the expert (Sjöblom & Hamari, 2017). However, a growing number of streamers have discovered that Twitch’s integrated technologies allow for the learner to stream their own learning. That means a streamer may set up a channel to broadcast their own learning and invite fellow learners and experts to participate. Therefore, an increasing amount of Twitch users are streaming their learning in order to crowdsource socially constructed knowledge. Through this complex multimodal virtual space “informal communities emerge, socialize, and participate” to make meaning (Hamilton, Garretson, & Kerne, 2014, p. 1315). This has lead Twitch to expand its content to include a variety of channels such as education and learning categories. Twitch’s crowdsourced live streaming platform allows users to broadcast their content with very little learning curve. Novice users set up their own channel and begin real-time collaboration with participants from across the experience spectrum with a basic laptop and internet connection (Payne et al., 2017). Increasingly, streamers on Twitch are electing to learn new content by broadcasting the metacognition of their own learning processes via four modes simultaneously: 1) computer desktop; 2) embedded webcam; 3) integrated chat window, and 4) audio. I argue that Twitch’s multimodal platform empowers novices to self-direct their learning by crowdsourcing the expertise of others to both advance their own learning as well as collaborate with other learners. In this presentation, I analyze the learning affordances of Twitch in two ways. First, I explore the culture of Twitch which fosters community building and collaborative learning (Gandolfi, 2016). In order to understand the culture of Twitch it is requisite to understand its roots in gaming culture; specifically how out-of-game social spaces (affinity spaces) have traditionally served as learning ecologies (Hayes, 2012).  Next, I will explore the way in which Twitch’s multimodal platform influences learning (Payne, Keith, Schuetzler, & Giboney, 2017). Finally, I use multimodality as a theoretical framework to analyze the learning affordances of Twitch in the ever-expanding digital resources in virtual spaces.

Keywords: Affinity spaces, multimodal learning, crowdsource learning, Twitch.

References:
[1] Duncan, S. C. (2010). Gamers as Designers: A Framework for Investigating Design in Gaming Affinity Spaces. E-Learning and Digital Media, 7(1), 21–34.
[2] Gandolfi, E. (2016). To watch or to play, it is in the game: The game culture on Twitch.tv among performers, plays and audiences. Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, 8(1), 63–82.
[3] Hamilton, W. A., Garretson, O., & Kerne, A. (2014). Streaming on Twitch: Fostering Participatory Communities of Play Within Live Mixed Media. Proceedings of the 32Nd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1315–1324. New York, NY, USA: ACM.
[4] Hayes, E. R. (2012). Learning in Video Game Affinity Spaces. P. Lang.
[5] Payne, K., Keith, M. J., Schuetzler, R. M., & Giboney, J. S. (2017). Examining the learning effects of live streaming video game instruction over Twitch. Computers in Human Behavior, 77, 95–109.
[6] Sjöblom, M., & Hamari, J. (2017). Why do people watch others play video games? An empirical study on the motivations of Twitch users. Computers in Human Behavior, 75, 985–996.

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