Abstract: The internet offers endless possibilities for the activities of various “producers” and promoters of learning online. Education is thus involved in a highly competitive struggle for attention in which entertainment is an indispensable tool. In this new context, thinking about education as a mission is becoming more and more problematic. My intention is to examine several Bulgarian online educational sites which use entertainment as a key strategy to implement their stated educational objectives. Through these examples, this paper comments on the tension between understanding education as a mission on the one hand, and its transformation into an attractive commodity on the other.
Keywords: internet, new media, education, globalization, educational institutions, edutainment, market, digital marketing, attention market
New Communication Technologies and the Promise of Ending “Molasses Classes”
New communication technologies promise to end “molasses classes”,[1] thus opening up the possibility of constructing various utopian visions of a general transformation in education, but also of growing concerns about the potential challenges posed by this change. For today’s teacher, figuring out how to compete for attention with the virtual world is becoming an increasingly difficult and necessary task. Even if we imagine a classroom completely isolated from technology (although the general trend is towards the growing use of technology in the classroom), the very existence of virtual worlds out there, with the possibility of being somewhere other than here, is transforming the classroom, setting new requirements, and increasingly heightening tensions between the boring and the interesting.[2]
The development of communication technologies has always been accompanied by transformations in the educational process, in the ways knowledge is created, stored and transmitted. Three milestones in this history – the invention of the printing press, the transformation of television into a mass medium, and the emergence of the internet – gave rise to fundamental cultural transformations that also changed perceptions of the ways in which people are educated. Today, the educational institution of the school is placed in a situation that is very different from the one it originated in. Globalization, involving processes of dynamic development of communications, weakening of the role of the state, deinstitutionalization, and the assertion of free market competition as the guiding economic principle, has transformed education into a field that is no longer just an instrument of public power, but rather a sphere of interaction and competition between different actors with different intentions. Education today is increasingly seen as a commodity in a very competitive market in which the fight for attention is decisive.
Schools have entered into a complex competition for attention with the online world. At the same time, their role as a leading educational institution is becoming increasingly precarious: “Given the dynamics of increasingly globalized social media, young people are also aware that formal institutions are no longer the only source from which they can access knowledge” (Rizvi, 2017: 2).
Yet the online world offers a sea of intriguing temptations.
Fig. 1. The classroom in competition with the online world. Snippet from The Simpsons. Source: https://giphy.com (accessed 10 January 2020).
The development of the internet has opened up opportunities for the emergence of new enlighteners[3] who take advantage of the democratic structure of the World Wide Web. These include not only the traditional custodians of knowledge formally associated with certain educational institutions – scholars, academics, teachers, experts. New actors are also emerging who may not be experts in a particular scientific field, but may have different expertise, such as in new media, public relations, different types of business, or digital marketing. At the same time, the democratic nature of the Web allows both professionals and amateurs to take the role of “teachers”. The saturation of the internet with new enlighteners spreading knowledge reveals the tension between the visions of a revolution in education presented, for example, in the book The One World Schoolhouse by Salman Khan (2012), the founder of the Khan Academy, and the dangers of the “rise of the amateur” analyzed by Andrew Keen (2007) in his book The Cult of the Amateur.
Online Education as a Mission. Mission as Marketing
This paper is based on a two-year monitoring, from January 2018 to January 2020, of eight websites claiming an educational mission: Ucha.se (I Learn), Mini mashini (Mini Machines), Balgarska istoriya (Bulgarian History), Geograf.BG (Geographer.BG), Ocenka-BEL (Assessment-Bulgarian Language & Literature), Proznanie (Proknowledge), Daskal.eu (Teacher.eu), Kak se pishe? (How Do You Spell It?), and Balgarska nauka (Bulgarian Science). The analysis includes observations on their online activity, their media presence, as well as several events organized by them. The analysis is complemented by semi-structured research interviews with their founders or leading figures in their teams. Those particular websites were chosen for research because of their popularity (albeit different for each website) gained thanks to the use of effective strategies to position themselves well on the online attention market.
The conducted interviews revealed the perception of the educational initiative as a personal mission (regardless of the fact that some of the sites had been launched as commercial ventures, or had become such subsequently). Curiously, a recurring pattern, albeit in different variations, can be discerned in the history of the emergence of these educational projects. At its core is usually some personal story of an encounter with shortcomings of the formal education system and a voluntary commitment to make up for them. Thus, the idea of these sites was actually born out of the need to fill in the perceived shortcomings. The second step in their development involved the discovery that other people were also interested in an educational product that had been originally intended for personal use or for a very small circle of people close to their founders. This, for some of those sites, was the initial scheme of finding a niche for development. The further development of these projects depended on the choice of whether to become a for-profit or a non-profit activity. A third step was found in the stories of several of the sites – a turning point at which interest in them suddenly grew and they significantly expanded their audiences. This step was linked to their social media activity and led to finding partners and funding.
For example, the story of the Ucha.se website, which is reminiscent of the story of the founding of the Khan Academy, fits into this pattern. Its founder, Darin Madzharov, said that the idea arose from his effort to explain math problems to his sister remotely while he was studying in Germany. To help her, he recorded short videos, which soon became popular among her schoolmates. Eventually, as these videos attracted more and more interest, the idea of turning the project into a commercial venture was born. The story of Ucha.se began with the effort to remedy a problem of Bulgaria’s formal education system, noticed by the founder of the site and often discussed in the public sphere: a large part of the students in school do not understand what is taught in class and this demotivates them. Various reasons can be analyzed: an overloaded curriculum, difficult-to-understand language of some textbooks, insufficient classroom time that does not allow for individual attention to be given to students with difficulties, changing learning habits, increasingly difficult concentration. A platform such as Ucha.se successfully found its niche because its mission can be seen not only as helping students but also as helping parents by relieving them of one of their duties: studying with their children at home. The success of educational products designed for home use, and particularly of those that incorporate edutainment strategies, is discussed in detail by researchers David Buckingham and Margaret Scanlon (2003) in the context of British education in their book Education, Entertainment and Learning in the Home. The authors cite as one of the main reasons for the popularity of these products their ability to support parents in their role as teachers as well as, being designed for leisure-time use, to be seen by children as a way to learn while having fun.
The research interviews with leading figures at the monitored sites revealed several commonplaces in the understanding of their educational mission. The most recurrent motive was the “translation” of knowledge into understandable, accessible language for a wider audience. For sites such as Ucha.se and Ocenka-BEL, such translation consists in conveying the material from textbooks in a more visual and communicative form. For sites such as Balgarska istoriya, Balgarska nauka and Geograf.BG, it consists in presenting science in an interesting way. The second most frequently stated goal was to revive curiosity for learning by offering interesting content. This goal also had a values aspect – a commitment to promote the idea that knowledge and education are valuable. These intentions were also linked to the idea of restoring the prestige of learning and research, and of the people involved in them – building a different image of the teacher, the scholar, the academic. Another recurring motive in the interviews was the commitment to building skills and competencies that are relevant to a rapidly changing world, self-reflection and personal development skills, lifelong learning skills. Alongside this, albeit to varying degrees and in different aspects, the interviewees also showed a certain commitment to the “national” – whether seen in recalling lesser-known facts about Bulgarian history, or in promoting achievements by Bulgarian scientists, or in presenting unknown geographical places in Bulgaria, or in helping Bulgarian students develop competencies that will enable them to be competitive among their peers around the world, or in expanding their knowledge and proficiency in the Bulgarian language.
The thus formulated missions in fact contained (a more or less explicit) criticism of the formal educational institution – of the difficult language of some textbooks, of the overloaded curricula, of “molasses classes”, of the slow reform of curricula in a fast-changing world, of the coercion imposed on students in the formal education system, of the decline of values. It remains an open question to what extent these projects are really succeeding in their stated missions and what are the circumstances that hinder their success. As well as why they have chosen to solve certain problems and not others.[4]
Although they were critical of the school institution, the people behind these educational projects were willing to support and work with schools – they presented this intention as another aspect of their mission. Through various initiatives, the monitored educational sites sought interaction with schools – screening video lessons in class, visiting schools, offering subscriptions for teachers,[5] conducting training sessions. On closer inspection, however, this collaboration has had an ambiguous effect. On the one hand, it provides tools for teachers to diversify their classes and hold students’ attention, and can save them time in preparing classes; on the other hand, however, it undermines the authority of the school institution. Educational sites can potentially have a certain subversive effect, creating certain expectations about what the educational process should look like – for example, that it should become a fun activity that does not require too much effort.
While the common mission of these platforms is to fill in various shortcomings of Bulgaria’s formal education system, each is specialized in a more specific area. Ucha.se offers a video platform supporting students’ self-study. Lessons on the platform generally follow school curricula, and can even be arranged according to the content of the textbook used by the particular user. Ocenka-BEL operates in the same niche, but it is devoted to one subject: Bulgarian Language and Literature. Another difference from Ucha.se is that Ocenka-BEL provides free resources and is rather amateur in character. The videos are made by a teacher from the city of Ruse with the assistance of a programmer and a small team of her students. The Mini mashini project is a free platform presenting a series (with short tests for each episode) devoted to the skills of the future. The sites Geograf.BG, Balgarska istoriya and Balgarska nauka are thematic. Their intention is to present in an attractive way the relevant scientific field in various media forms – text, images, videos, games, podcasts. In this way, they present science in a popular format. It is characteristic of these sites that they are targeted not only at students but also at a wider demographic interested in the relevant field of knowledge. The site Kak se pishe?, for its part, has found a niche in compensating for the lack of a reliable online Bulgarian spelling dictionary. In addition to being able to quickly look up a word, users can also read comprehensibly presented articles about particular grammar, punctuation or spelling cases. Platforms such as Proznanie and Daskal.eu do something different from the sites described so far – they offer live student-teacher sessions, thus enabling remote private tutoring. In this way, they resolve one of the common problems of parents – taking their children to tutoring after school (often necessary to make up for omissions in knowledge or insufficient teaching at school).
An important part of the strategies for capturing audience attention is the way in which the sites articulate their mission through their self-presentation messages, thereby announcing their intentions to a wider audience. The ways in which they present themselves on their homepage play an essential role. One recurring message of the monitored group of sites is the keyword “mission”, which they use to present their activities: “Our mission is to reach everyone who is interested in the popular-science aspect of history, and our priority is the younger generation” (Balgarska istoriya). On the homepage of Geograf.BG it is formulated as follows: “The mission of Geograf BG is to promote science among children and young people in Bulgaria through high-quality web content, scientific workshops, presentations, and a number of geographic events, the largest of which is the Bulgarian Geographic Festival” (Geograf.BG). The platform Ucha.se presents itself as follows: “The mission of Ucha.se”: “We, the team of Ucha.se, help students to become successful and happy! Education and developed skills enable everyone to achieve their goals and dreams. This is how together we improve Bulgaria!” (Ucha.se). When the keyword “mission” is missing in the presentations, the word “believe” often appears, emphasizing the relevant team’s belief in and commitment to the cause of education: “We believe that change starts with each one of us and we are determined to prove that with common efforts, perseverance and persistence its achievement is possible” (Balgarska nauka). On the homepage of Proznanie, we read the following: “We at Proznanie believe in the unlimited possibilities that knowledge, supported by technology, can give to today’s Bulgarian children” (Proznanie). It is important for these messages to emphasize that the educational initiative is perceived as a mission, as a significant cause which the founders of these projects truly believe in.
Finding a sustainable and attractive promotional formula plays an important role in broadcasting messages to the general public. An eloquent example of a slogan is that of Ucha.se: “Lessons in understandable and interesting language”. The target group of their marketing campaign is students. The keywords “understandable” and “interesting” promise that the video lessons will replace the hard-to-understand textbooks and banish boredom. Another example of a slogan is “Balgarska nauka [Bulgarian Science]. Learn more!”, which expresses one of the guiding goals of the site’s mission – to expand the knowledge of science of those eager to learn more. The very names of the sites also convey certain messages. The name “Balgarska istoriya” (Bulgarian History) contains its patriotic message. The name of the website Kak se pishe? (How Do You Spell It?) is ingenious. On the one hand, it articulates the specific purpose of the site; on the other, it provides an advantage on search engines. If we type the question “How do you spell...?” into Google, it will take us directly to this site. Another essential aspect in summarizing and articulating the mission is finding a memorable logo – the turtle of Geograf.BG, the lion of Balgarska istoriya, the light bulb of Mini mashini, the book spotlighted by the desk lamp of Ocenka-BEL.
Fig. 2. Examples of logos from the sites Mini mashini, Balgarska istoriya, Ucha.se, Geograf.BG, Balgarska nauka and Ocenka-BEL.
There is a conscious search for attention-grabbing slogans and images that summarize the main messages of the sites. Particular attention is paid to branding. These practices show once again the importance of marketing strategies for the development of sites.
Education as a Commodity
Kupi nauka! (Buy Science!) is the name of the online shop of the site Balgarska nauka. The shop aims to generate additional revenue for the site, which provides free scientific content to its audience. Many of the items offered by the shop (T-shirts, mugs, cloth bags) are science-themed.
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Fig. 3. A pair of mugs from the online shop of Balgarska nauka, made by designer Rositsa Tashkova. Source: www.kupinauka.com (accessed 10 January 2020).
Here, buying science can be understood in two ways. On the one hand, each product teaches the user something about science. For example, you can buy a pair of mugs made by designer Rositsa Tashkova – one with a diagram of the adenine molecule, the other with a diagram of the uracil molecule. The two diagrams are accompanied by a witty text in English, which is divided between the two mugs: “I wish I was Adenine… / …so I get paired with U!” The mugs come with an explanation: “Adenine (A) and uracil (U) are two of the four nucleotide bases that make up RNA, as well as a substitute for thymine in DNA. Uracil is very rarely present in the structure of DNA. It is complementary to adenine, with which it forms a pair of nucleotides linked by hydrogen bonds” (https://kupinauka.com/product/komplekt-chashi-adenin-i-uracil-2091791236). On the other hand, by buying a product from the online shop, the user contributes to the financial support of the scientific website. The presentation of each of the products ends with the following text: “With every purchase through kupinauka.com, you are supporting the magazine Balgarska nauka [Bulgarian Science] and helping to promote science in Bulgaria!” (https://kupinauka.com).
Although, technically speaking, the monitored sites can be defined as “for-profit” and “non-profit” ventures, the boundaries between them are fluid. The “non-profit” ventures seek independent funding models to ensure their sustainability. They are often associated with a commercial venture that funds them. Balgarska istoriya has a publishing house. Geograf.BG offers lessons and training. Balgarska nauka publishes a magazine for which it charges a subscription fee, albeit a nominal one. All three of these sites have online shops. Mini mashini organizes trainings. It also sells T-shirts and mugs with the platform’s logo. Also noteworthy is the small “educational shop” of Ocenka-BEL which, along with educational products – books, collections and manuals – sells souvenirs: mugs, T-shirts, bags with the site’s logo, calendars and magnets with the portrait of poet and revolutionary Hristo Botev, drawn by a student, a pair of mugs with a quote by writer Svetoslav Minkov.
Regardless of the specific “for-profit” or “non-profit” situation, the ability to attract attention, to intrigue the audience, is key to the development of the sites and their sustainability. Several of the respondents said that there was a certain turning point in the history of their projects, at which their audience grew significantly and after which they gained more publicity. This moment led to a restructuring of their operation, to a greater focus on professionalism, and to a sense of greater responsibility. This moment involved “getting noticed” – not only by the audience of the relevant site, but also by businesses, such as the company Vivacom which supports several educational initiatives, by foundations such as America for Bulgaria, and by official institutions such as the Ministry of Education.
The educational product is offered in exchange for attention; the attention received may become a bargaining chip, it may be converted into something else – funding, influence, prestige. The funding received, in turn, may be invested in improving the product itself to make it even more attractive. A distinctive feature of the most popular educational websites are attractive products, distinguished by high-quality technical design. This interrelationship between gaining popularity, securing funding, and producing an increasingly technically superior product can be seen most clearly in the development of Balgarska istoriya and Ucha.se.
Video 1. Mediaeval Glory (2019) – official trailer of the latest historical series by Balgarska istoriya. Source: YouTube channel of Balgarska istoriya (accessed 10 January 2020).
These examples reveal different ways in which non-profit educational goals are intertwined with strategies for successful attention marketing and playing by its rules. However, it would be wrong to conclude that the new online enlighteners use their educational mission only instrumentally, as a means to some other ends. On the contrary, the interviews with the founders of the online platforms revealed a complex interplay between personal commitment and belief in the educational cause, on the one hand, and carefully calibrated business and marketing strategies (necessary at the very least to secure funding and sustainability of the project) on the other. Darin Madzharov’s comment is telling:
A person who has a mission doesn’t need motivation. Let me put it this way: a person who has a big goal, mission, dream, lives with it ... If a cause doesn’t have a good business model (we’re not talking billions here), the founder of the cause themselves signs the death certificate of their cause. (Research interview with Darin Madzharov, founder of Ucha.se)
At the same time, the comments of the interviewed founders of online educational sites revealed a realistic understanding of the potential dangers of this interaction, of the opportunities it opens up, but also of the potential threat of commercialization, harming the educational mission.[6]
The phenomena under consideration are in fact a very small aspect of much larger processes of commodification in different spheres of public life – the transformation of some common goods into commodities, the prioritization of market logic which has begun to define and transform various spheres of public life. These processes involve the imposition of a neoliberal model that views globalization “largely [as] an economic phenomenon, in which markets play a fundamental role in reconfiguring the nature of social relations” (Rizvi, 2017: 2). The logic of market economy “has spawned a demand for the purposes of education to be recast in largely economic terms. This has either sidelined the moral and cultural concerns of education entirely, or else rendered it secondary” (ibid.: 6).
It is precisely this economic conception of education that has been criticized by a number of cultural theorists, who have drawn attention to the disastrous consequences that the extension of market logic to all spheres of public life may have. Education is often pointed out as one of the fields that must be protected from the overarching logic of the market economy. What would happen to education if we see it “as a supermarket, and its students as customers and consumers” (Karpov, 2013: 75)? Market pressures have given rise to a tension between the notion of the cultural role of education and its ability to fit into contemporary economic processes.
The Student as Consumer
The transformation of education into a commodity that must sell well on the market of “the infectiously interesting” (Ditchev, 2016) is also related to the different role occupied by “the student” (knowledge seeker) compared to past historical times. As a consumer/customer in a free market, the student can set the rules. These processes are not confined to the sphere of education – they affect many spheres in contemporary life: “The infectiously interesting is a commodity that I offer to others; and in the market it is not the expert aesthete or the politician/ideologue but they, the consumers themselves, who have the final say, the sovereign right to take or walk away” (ibid.: 10). If we paraphrase to refer to the situation in education – it is not the teacher, until recently considered the expert, but the student as consumer who has the final say.
The interactive nature of online educational sites opens up new possibilities for the activity of the student as user/consumer: the student may give feedback in the form of likes or comments expressing satisfaction, recommendations, criticism. They may even order materials on certain topics.[7] One of the interesting examples in this respect is again the Ucha.se platform. After each video lesson there is a forum where students can express their attitude. Similar examples can be seen in the comments on the YouTube channel and Facebook page of Balgarska istoriya. Sometimes users comment on the quality of the video and other times on the content, adding certain facts or correcting the information, thus becoming something like co-authors of the teaching materials. Some users ask for a video to be made on a certain topic or a quiz on a video.
Fig. 4. “Would you make a video about the battle at the red wall in Macedonia?” Comment below the video The Battle of Anchialus on the YouTube channel of Balgarska istoriya. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z025pz9CLdg (accessed 10 January 2020).
Ucha.se seems to be the best example of adaptability to users’ tastes. Teachers on the site respond almost instantly to comments from students and parents. They make corrections, provide clarifications, and show a willingness to satisfy users’ wishes. The ability to adapt to the tastes of the audience and the flexibility to continuously adjust learning content and educational services to the wants and needs of users has become a crucial factor for success and popularity.
Online Battles for Attention
For the development of online platforms, expertise in digital marketing seems to be more significant than, or at least as important as, expertise in the relevant knowledge area or in the teaching practices themselves. Presence and activity on social media provides visibility and gives greater chances for audience expansion. Here is how Mario Mishev, one of the founders of Balgarska istoriya, explains the role of Facebook:
We’re constantly trying to be flexible in this highly dynamic environment of social networks that are changing their audiences and their functionalities. But really, if it weren’t for the social network as a phenomenon, we would have indeed been a complete failure. After all, there are few people who get up in the morning with the idea of reading about Bulgarian history; they aren’t going to go to Google and type in “interesting facts of Bulgarian history”. (Research interview with Mario Mishev, co-founder of Balgarska istoriya)
This comment reveals not only the role of social media in gaining popularity but also some of the characteristics of the process of knowledge and information dissemination on social media. First of all, for the user, accessing a particular piece of knowledge is more often driven by chance (depending on what the user comes across while scrolling the feed on Facebook) rather than conscious search. What is learned from social media is fragmentary, it does not follow any logical sequence, and is less and less perceived as a process with certain steps in it, as accumulation.
These processes began back in the Age of Television. In his famous book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman (2005 [1985]) examined the way in which television, which became a mass medium in the 1970s and 1980s, changed the nature of communication and led to fundamental transformations in culture. In the chapter “Teaching as an Amusing Activity”, Postman (ibid.: 142–154) compared the educational situation in the classroom with that in front of the television set. He formulated “three commandments that form the philosophy of the education which television offers” (ibid.: 147). The first one states, “Thou shalt have no prerequisites”:
No previous knowledge is to be required. There must not be even a hint that learning is hierarchical, that it is an edifice constructed on a foundation. The learner must be allowed to enter at any point without prejudice. … In other words, in doing away with the idea of sequence and continuity in education, television undermines the idea that sequence and continuity have anything to do with thought itself. (Ibid.: 147)
In the environment of the internet, and especially of social media used as a source of information and knowledge, these characteristics have become even more salient. We are inundated with streams of knowledge in fragments that must grab and keep our attention (at least briefly).
If we go back to Mario Mishev’s comment, we can see one more significant characteristic: the important role of the interesting fact. It is interesting in itself to trace the change in the notion of “interesting” in opposition to what is perceived as “boring”. “Boring” is often a stereotypical description of what happens in school, in the classroom outside the virtual world. The online world, meanwhile, is expected to provide endless opportunities to pursue what is “interesting”.
The social media activity of the monitored educational sites and platforms shows a variety of creative ways to capture attention. One telling example is a promotional video by the Mini mashini project, announcing an audition for a series of entertaining educational videos. The video is titled: “Stop! Stop scrolling! There’s something important you need to know here.”.
Fig. 5. “Stop! Stop scrolling!” Source: Facebook page of Mini mashini (accessed 10 January 2020).
The appeal to the online user expresses a desire to keep their attention on that particular message amidst the stream of fast-flowing information. The video is a tongue-in-cheek take on the nature of social media and, at the same time, plugs into the flow and relies on “scrolling”.
The notable social media presence of the monitored educational sites and platforms includes two important components. The first one is activity. Posts should be daily, which means that people involved in the development of educational projects should spend a significant amount of time on this activity. The second important element is presence on several social media platforms. All monitored educational projects are present on several internet platforms. They have main websites or blogs where they publish material – articles, videos, interviews, podcasts – and at the same time, profiles on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. The different online channels are interlinked and have differentiated functions – they are used with a focus on different activities and are targeted at different audiences.
Almost all the interviewed respondents pointed out Facebook’s leading role in gaining popularity. They noted that the majority of visits to their sites were via Facebook. At the same time, several respondents said that younger generations prefer Instagram and that there has been an exodus from Facebook. Thus, their Instagram presence provides them with access to a younger audience. In addition to being age-differentiated, communication on Instagram has a different character – with a strong focus on the visual. Text, if present at all, is short. The emphasis is on the curious, the interesting, the attention-grabbing which speaks for itself.
Fig. 6. “When the last class on Friday is over, but the teacher makes us stay for one last task.” Instagram against boredom in class. Source: Instagram profile of Ucha.se (accessed 10 January 2020).
Edutainment: The Necessary Weapon in the Fight for Attention Online
It is assumed that the term “edutainment” was first used to describe Walt Disney’s True-Life Adventures series in the mid-20th century, and later by Robert Heyman in 1973 for a National Geographic Society documentary series. The term “edutainment” became more widespread in the 1970s and 1980s, and the phenomenon itself gradually turned into an entertainment industry. Although the linking of education and entertainment is not a new phenomenon (it can be seen in previous eras as well), it was during the Age of Television that this notion became mainstream. Neil Postman (2005 [1985]) analyzed these processes and questioned the widespread idea that entertainment is something intrinsic to the educational process.
Fig. 7. Still from the popular American edutainment show Sesame Street. Source: avalonlibrary.org (accessed 10 January 2020).
If we look back at the history of education, we will see that there was a time (and not so long ago at that) when teaching and learning were perceived as hard work, (self-)discipline, a time-consuming process. For a long period in the history of school education, this was precisely the dominant notion, and it was associated with certain concepts underlying mass education which emerged in the context of nation-state building. This history is traced, for example, by Peter Gray, one of the ideologues of democratic education, in his book Free to Learn in the chapter “Why Schools Are What They Are: A Brief History of Education” (Gray, 2013: 42–65). The turnaround in the concepts of learning and teaching was caused, inter alia, by factors specific to the educational field. However, the changes in the concepts of education cannot be viewed in isolation from cultural, economic, and technological changes. In their article “Selling Learning: Towards a Political Economy of Edutainment Media”, David Buckingham and Margaret Scanlon (2005) explain the emergence of a niche for edutainment media resources by several interrelated economic and social factors. Aimed at children’s “leisure time”, these products cannot but include entertainment. Buckingham and Scanlon (ibid.: 45) argue that “the home will increasingly come to be seen as an extension of the school”.
In this context, entertainment has become a vital tool and a reliable weapon in the fight for attention. Among the most common forms of edutainment used by Bulgarian educational platforms are educational videos, online games (most often in the form of short quizzes), popular entertainment formats such as series, competitions with reality-show elements, fun competitions, video lessons taught by stars of the local music, theater, and cinema scene, and famous vloggers or influencers, various fun puzzles on social media. These online edutainment products form and quickly spread certain ideas about what educational activities should look like.
Forms of spectacle are characteristic not only of the online activities of educational sites but also of the offline events organized by them. An example of this type of event was the Mini mashini platform’s launch before a live audience in October 2018. The style of the show – the way Mihail Stefanov, the founder of the platform, appeared on the stage, was like the beginning of a magic show. Introduced by an off-stage voice, he appeared wearing a hat with a light bulb[8] against the background of dramatic music. Another example of a show event was the launch of Tsar na istoriyata (King of History), a game created by an entrepreneurship teacher and his students with support from Balgarska istoriya for its implementation and distribution. The chosen format of the event was that of a talk show. The role of a famous host was played by Mario Mishev, one of the two co-founders of Balgarska istoriya. At the beginning, he drew attention to the format chosen for the launch. It is important to note that at both events, the organizers displayed a detached, tongue-in-cheek attitude towards the spectacle format, the perception of the event as a theater show meant to attract attention.
Predictably, along with its penetration into various spheres of public life, the culture of spectacle is increasingly entering the field of education. The title of one of the promotional videos of Ucha.se is emblematic: School Lessons as a Big Show (in Bulgarian).
Video 2. School Lessons as a Big Show. Source: YouTube channel of Ucha.se (accessed 10 January 2020).
One of the most popular and successful examples of the use of gaming is Ucha.se. Users of the platform have a special profile that tracks their activity in the form of points, levels, and badges. Depending on how active they are, students progress to different levels. Apart from that, they also have the opportunity to win badges in different categories.
Fig. 8. A user’s profile on the video platform Ucha.se.
Another ingenious form of edutainment are the lessons taught by “celebrities” (actors, musicians, vloggers, influencers). Such examples are the educational videos of Ucha.se featuring figures such as pop singers Maria Ilieva and Divna, actors Bashar Rahal and Yulian Vergov, and influencer Yuli Tonkin, the Mini mashini series featuring popular vlogger Chris Zahariev, or the series of edutainment competitions in which Mihail Stefanov appears as a star host. For example, here is how the video An Ancient Greek Myth about the Origin of the Gods with Divna (in Bulgarian) is presented on the YouTube channel of Ucha.se:
A unique video about the ancient Greek gods! Watch so you can learn everything important about them in just a few minutes. Why did Cronus devour his children and how did Zeus manage to dethrone him? And all this is told by Divna! :) (Source: YouTube channel of Ucha.se)
Video 3. A lesson with Divna. Source: YouTube channel of Ucha.se (accessed 10 January 2020).
In addition to bringing an entertaining element, the recruitment of popular figures is meant to bring prestige to learning and knowledge. However, it should be borne in mind that in some cases this could backfire.
The Mini mashini series of entertaining videos, Misho’s Dare (in Bulgarian), is another example of edutainment. In them, the presenter Mihail Stefanov sets two participants (school or university students) a task involving techniques of developing skills of the future in the form of a funny competition. The approach in creating this series is interesting – the participants were chosen by audition.
Video 4. Trailer of the series Misho’s Dare. Source: YouTube channel of Mini mashini (accessed 10 January 2020).
Undeniably, the entertainment element makes knowledge more shareable, enabling it to reach a wider audience. At the same time, however, it restructures the educational content itself and, in certain situations, can have a subversive effect on the latter, “dumbing down” the message and sometimes parodically inverting certain meanings. This is the reason why edutainment products are sometimes criticized by experts in the field, who accuse them of being “unserious”. The interviewed founders of educational sites demonstrated a clear awareness of these dangers, of the inherent tension between the educational mission and the entertaining elements they use to reach a wider audience. On the one hand, they obviously appreciated entertainment as a tool for capturing attention. On the other, they expressed their hesitation that entertainment can take away from educational value. Some of the interviewees expressed concerns about what their educational product would look like in the eyes of a more competent audience. And recognizing the tension between the educational and purely entertaining aspects, they set certain limits on how much entertainment is allowed. However, arriving at concrete solutions to this problem is complex and will be explored at a later stage of my work. The desire of sites to reach and engage audiences, and the desire to educate, to create something meaningful, seem to be in constant tension.
One effect of the forms of edutainment described here is that they shape certain ideas and expectations of what education should look like. And these ideas are transferred from the online world to the offline classroom.
The Need for Critical Reflection
In his book Media Spectacle, Douglas Kellner (2003) discusses the transformation of the spectacle into a dominant cultural form, outlining its dangers. He points out the important role that critical theory would play:
In this context, it is important to develop a critical theory of the spectacle to provide students and citizens with the tools to unpack, interpret, and analyze what the spectacles of the contemporary era signify and tell us about the present and the future. (Ibid.: 27)
Analyzing these new educational phenomena and practices, not from a narrow pedagogical perspective but rather through the perspective of cultural sciences – in a broader cultural, social, technological, economic, and political perspective – would bring a better understanding of how these processes work, what the real dangers and real opportunities are for education. A critical approach to these new forms of learning and knowledge transmission has become vital and could contribute to education itself in many ways. It could be useful to educational product developers by helping them find effective strategies for competitive inclusion in the attention market, but also by making visible the potential dangers of doing so. Such an approach would help teachers cultivate in students the ability to take a critical distance from entertainment culture while “playing” with it, and it would also help students learn to make the best of the new opportunities the Web opens up for them without being caught up in it.
In other words, critical reflection on these phenomena could guide the way they enter the classroom – not only as educational resources used by teachers and students, but also as a subject of discussion and analysis, as an example of a different way of teaching and learning compared with other existing models.
References
Buckingham, David and Scanlon, Margaret. 2003. Education, Entertainment and Learning in the Home. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Buckingham, David and Scanlon, Margaret. 2005. “Selling Learning: Towards a Political Economy of Edutainment Media”. Media, Culture & Society, 27 (1): 41–58.
Clark, Ron. 2011. The End of Molasses Classes: Getting Our Kids Unstuck: 101 Extraordinary Solutions for Parents and Teachers. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Ditchev, Ivaylo. 2016. Kulturata kato distantsiya [Culture as distance]. Sofia: Universitetsko izdatelsvo “Sv. Kliment Ohridski”.
Gray, Peter. 2013. Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life. New York: Basic Books.
Karpov, Alexander. 2013. “The Commodification of Education”. Russian Education and Society, 55 (5): 75–90 (accessed 10 January 2020).
Keen, Andrew. 2007. The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture. New York: Doubleday.
Kellner, Douglas. 2003. Media Spectacle. London and New York: Routledge.
Khan, Salman. 2012. The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined. New York: Twelve.
Postman, Neil. 2005 [1985]. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. 20th anniversary ed. New York: Penguin Books.
Rizvi, Fazal. 2017. “Globalization and the Neoliberal Imaginary of Educational Reform”. Education Research and Foresight Working Papers, no. 20. Paris: UNESCO (accessed 10 January 2020).
Translated by Katerina Popova
[1] To use the term coined by Ron Clark, American educator and founder of the Ron Clark Academy for educators, in his bestselling book, The End of Molasses Classes: Getting Our Kids Unstuck (2011). Although in it he does not discuss the application of new technologies in schools, its very title is telling: the problem of how to keep students’ attention and combat boredom in the classroom is a hot topic in pedagogical literature.
[2] This paper was written before the COVID-19 lockdown, which forced classes to go virtual. This different situation placed the relationship between the formal institution of the school and informal educational practices in a new context, and will be examined in subsequent papers.
[3] By this term I refer to various actors who use the internet as a medium with the intention of disseminating knowledge and educating others. The word “enlightener” is also associated with the notion of education as a noble mission, a significant endeavor (as it was perceived, for example, by the culture of the Bulgarian Revival).
[4] These are questions that will be explored in the next steps of my research on the subject.
[5] Teachers are a target group that is not less important than students.
[6] It would be interesting to take a closer look at possible concrete strategies to solve this problem.
[7] This paper does not cover a very popular group of sites where the customer – seller model is fundamental. These are sites such as Pomagalo.com, where the user can download certain material via paid SMS. In a box at the bottom left of the screen, one sees requests for homework ghost-writers. These platforms are of a completely different nature. They are driven by commercial interest. They usually do not describe themselves as “educational”. Generally, they do not have an “About Us” section because their founders are hidden. The materials are often anonymous (unsigned). They may include amateur contributions by students as well as professional contributions – by scholars, literary critics – which are anonymized, thus being effectively pirated.
[8] The light bulb is the logo of Mini mashini.
Biographical note
Teodora Todorova is a PhD student in the PhD Programme in Cultural Anthropology at Sofia University’s Department of History and Theory of Culture. She has graduated in Cultural Studies and Slavic Philology. She teaches Bulgarian Language and Literature at the American College of Sofia. Her research interests are in the field of new media, education, and globalization.
Email: tea.a.todorova[at]gmail.com
