“How good of an entertainer are you?” This was the penultimate question in Samira’s interview for the role of a math teacher for middle school students at an international school.
“Pardon?” Samira said, as she thought she hadn’t heard the question correctly.
The interviewer could see the question mark on Samira’s face. He obliged by not just repeating the question but rephrasing it. He asked “Have you heard about edutainment?” In the same breath, he continued, “So, how good of an entertainer are you?”
With a confident smile, Samira replied, “I am an edutainer, not an entertainer, sir.” She went on to say, “I believe we are in the edutainment era and teachers need to be edutainers and not just entertainers.”
DEFINITION OF EDUTAINMENT
If you are like me, you may be puzzled trying to decipher the meaning of “edutainment.” The Cambridge dictionary defines edutainment as follows: The process of entertaining people at the same time as you are teaching them something, and the products/ processes such as television programs, software, and others that do this.
I believe there are three components in edutainment: Man, Material, and Method.
The dilemma begins when you juggle the educator and entertainer’s hats and try to play the two roles simultaneously. Unlike a movie about twins in which one is good and the other is evil, education and entertainment are supposed to complement each other. The juggler who effortlessly and judiciously juggles these two hats is the edutainer. While most argue that you can either educate or entertain, we must realize that it is not an “either or” but an “and” approach that is needed.
3 COMPONENTS OF EDUTAINMENT
Let’s decode what it takes to find the right balance between being an educator and entertainer.
1. Man: Like a juggler whose objective is to entertain the audience and focus on the multiple objects they are trying to juggle, the trainer/educator’s focus is not merely on the completion of the curriculum aligned to the learning objectives. It is instead on achieving the learning outcome through learner engagement. The educator focuses on the lesson plan and learning objectives, while the entertainer seeks to explore the best ways to deliver the lesson. This is where the next M comes in.
2. Material (answers the what): Colorful beads and blocks in a third-grade math class and business simulations in which corporate executives use gamification to manage profit and loss statements are examples of how to leverage technology, games, virtual reality, etc., to present material to the learner. However, the material needs to be used by the man (trainer/ educator) judiciously. Otherwise, the clicks, the sounds, the points earned, the hurdles overcome may draw the student’s/participant’s attention from the core topic or learning objective.
As an example, take Vinita, a seventh grade student who remembers her physics teacher introducing the concept of magnetism through a love story. By introducing characters who were opposites and yet found each other attractive, the teacher wanted to suggest “Opposite poles attract each other,” but the only thing Vinita remembers is the love story—including every detail, from the names of the characters to the story setting and how the characters met, and, of course, the innumerable conflicts from which emerged sparks that strengthened their chemistry and how they fell in love.
Her mom interjected and said, “That’s fine, but what does this mean?”
Vinita’s response: “Absolute opposites can fall in love.”
Vinita’s mother chuckled and prodded further, “That’s fine, dear, but what is the lesson on magnetism?”
Vinita spontaneously replied, “Just like love, magnets also love to cling to surfaces—it’s all attraction, Mama.”
This is a classic example of the teacher wearing the entertainer’s hat while completely disregarding the educator’s hat. The story was the material used. Its purpose was to achieve learner engagement, along with the learning outcome. In this case, the learner engagement came at the cost of the learning outcome. This is a trap many educators fall into when they are transitioning from being an educator to an edutainer.
3. Method (answers the how): Are you going to narrate a story, play a video, or use a case study? Are you designing a multisensory experience? For example, in a quiz show, there could be three options:
a) The audio is played and you listen to identify the playback singer.
b) The audio is muted and the video is shown and you are asked to identify the playback singer.
c) Both the audio and video are played and you are asked to identify the playback singer.
Most may argue that the last example (c) is the best way to identify the playback singer. That format was designed to create a multisensory experience. Whether you want to pique the learner’s curiosity for the next sub-topic or confuse the learner to check for confidence in terms of understanding of the previous topic, the method must align with the purpose. Many educators who are transitioning to edutainers end up exploring methods where entertainment outweighs education. Often, educators who are coming up the learning curve may inadvertently slip into the entertainer’s role or the educator’s role. Be sure to recognize it is not “or” that you are striving for but “and.”
TIME TO TRANSITION
The edutainment market is expected to reach approximately $10.2 billion by 2033, according to a report published by the Edutainment Market Outlook. As the saying goes, “You can love me or hate me, but you can’t ignore me.” Edutainment is here to stay and thrive; now’s the time for educators to learn to transition into edutainers. That will lead to learners saying, “Now that’s edutainment!”