Connecting with Learners: Making Educational Content Watchable in the Age of TikTok and Memes
From one-person shows to sketches and memes, social media offers a vast array of digital content that learners consume daily. To connect with these learners, educators and school leaders must adapt their perspectives and strategies to the ever-evolving digital landscape.
This was the core message from motivational speaker and educational content creator, Lyqa Maravilla, to an audience of private academic sector members at a recent event in Pasay City. Maravilla, known as an "EduCreator," emphasized that educators don’t need to sing and dance to capture students' attention. Instead, they need to make their lessons more watchable.
"We need to shift our thinking when it comes to content, specifically educational content," she said.
What Makes Content Watchable for Today’s Learners?
Watchable content is not a one-size-fits-all concept. It is defined by the unique, personalized social media feeds curated by algorithms based on users' clicks, comments, and browsing history. This creates a significant challenge for educators and school leaders, who are tasked with engaging a diverse group of learners with varying digital habits, learning styles, and preferences.
Maravilla, who has garnered over 300 million views and reached more than 8 million subscribers across various social media platforms, shared three key strategies for navigating this digital environment.
1. Be "Quip-able": Catch Their Attention
To hook learners from the start, Maravilla advised educators to create a "quip"—a quick, engaging opening. This could be a question, a striking image, a strong statement, or a dynamic movement. When creating videos, she recommended skipping lengthy introductions and getting straight to the point to immediately capture attention.
2. Be "Quip-py": Sustain Their Attention
After grabbing a learner's attention, the next challenge is to sustain it. Maravilla highlighted the importance of storytelling. She suggested techniques like using humor, metaphors, relatable examples, and even cutaway scenes. She also noted that students appreciate when teachers use familiar language or reference jokes that resonate with them. These small, “quippy” adjustments make lessons easier to digest and more engaging from beginning to end.
3. Be "Quotable": Make It Memorable
The final goal is to make lessons memorable so students can retain what they've learned. To achieve this, Maravilla advised teachers to present information in bite-sized, digestible pieces. "We pick out the most nutritious, juicy parts and run the lesson again, highlighting these parts," she explained.
Other techniques she recommended to make lessons stick include using songs, visualization, rhymes, strong statements, and even intentional contradictions.
While these strategies might seem overwhelming at first, Maravilla assured educators that they become easier with practice. By understanding the distinct audiences, content styles, and formats of platforms like Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, educators can bridge the generational gap and turn these challenges into powerful tools for communication.