TRANSCRIPT: THIS COURSE ISN'T TAUGHT BY A ROBOT: CREATING INSTRUCTOR PRESENCE IN ONLINE COURSES WEBINAR

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>> Marisa: All right, you all. Welcome. Welcome. We're going to go ahead and get started since it is noon, with our presentation. Thank you for coming. So we'll start with some introductions. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Marisa Sullivan. I teach psychology and I'm also the social sciences chair. And I'm currently working on a solo project speaking about enhancing social presence in the online classroom.

>> Amy: And hi, everybody. I'm Amy Netzel. I'm an instructional designer and web accessibility specialist. And I work with my lovely two colleagues, Karen and Becky who are joining us today in instructional technologies. So I'm going to go ahead and turn off my camera so that the screen can be a little bit larger for you. All right. So we do have a lot of folks joining us today and during the webinar, you are going to be muted, but we do encourage your participation in the chat area there on the left hand side. And many of you have already had an opportunity to communicate with us through the chat. Thank you. We're going to be recording today's session -- excuse me. We're going to be recording today's session, and it will be available to you later on next week. I'm going to go ahead and share the next screen just in case we have any folks that are having some trouble hearing the presentation. They'll have an opportunity to call in. Marisa and I have a few participation activities planned for you today. And the first one is actually going to be a poll. And so I'm going to go ahead and share the next screen and put the poll up. And we're just kind of curious, just kind of from the top to see what your experience is with online teaching. Have you never taught online? And this is kind of your first time coming up in the fall. Did you start teaching online due to the pandemic when we had the huge transition? Or is your online teaching experience going back before the pandemic? You're a veteran with us.

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Okay. We have quite a few responses coming in.

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All right. Fantastic. I'm going to go ahead and publish that. We have a great mix of folks. We have about half that are teaching online due to the pandemic. And so maybe it still feels kind of new to you. And we have quite a few folks that have been veteran teachers, teaching online, and then a few that have never taught online. So Marisa and I hope that through today's presentation, you'll walk away with a few ideas that you can use in your online classes. We're going to do one more quick activity. And this time, we're going to use the chat space on the left. Kind of coming into the presentation, we're curious about what you already think about or what you kind of already know about instructor presence. So if you'll use the chat window to just type three words that come to mind when you think about instructor presence.

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[brief laughter] I see Becky says that her students don't think she's a zombie. Maxine, share lessons, videos. Catherine says, eye contact. Anna says, body language. That's a great one. Brittany Thorndike, listening, Charlene, challenging, motivating online lectures, monitoring. These are all great, great ways to kind of think of as instructor presence. This is fantastic. Proximity, eye contact, body language, knowledgeable, friendly. Fantastic. So sounds like a lot of you kind of have an idea about what we mean about the concept of instructor presence. And that's a great way to kind of go into this. And so during our presentation, Marisa is going to really unpack what it -- what instructor presence means, especially in the online environment. And then we're going to introduce to you some practical strategies for implementing instructor presence or creating instructor presence for your online classes. And then because when Marisa and I were planning this presentation, we know that there may be some hesitancies or concerns when it comes to creating instructor presence, we're going to go ahead and address some of those as well. So I'm going to go ahead and turn the presentation over to Marisa, and she's going to go ahead and begin unpacking the idea of instructor presence for us.

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>> Marisa: All right. So what is social presence or instructor presence? I'm going to be using these terms interchangeably so they mean the same thing for our purposes. 
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Before I get into all the ins and outs of it, this is a very complex and multifaceted concept that contains a lot of different methods and opportunities for interactions. 
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So the purpose of this section is just to kind of introduce you to some of these ideas. So you can start to think about how you're going to implement these in your online classroom. You may also find that you're already doing some of this stuff, which is great. 
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We always like validation of our effective techniques in our teaching methods. So what is this term, social presence or instructor presence. This is one of these terms we share quite a bit. It's one of those educational buzzwords that we may roll our eyes at, but what does it actually mean? 
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Well, there's four major parts to what social presence is. And a lot of you answered, your responses reflect what it is. So it looks like we have a really great idea of what social presence is. And hopefully we can give you some more hints. So the first part is personality. 
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Do your students know who you are? You need to give your students a sense of yourself as a person, including some social and emotional aspects through the use of things like self-disclosure and humor. The next part is your physical presence. Do your students know that you're there? 
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Are you attending in a way? Students need to be able to see and hear you just as they would in a face-to-face class. The third part, which is sometimes the more complicated part, are these connections and interactions we provide as an instructor. 
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So think about what kind of community are you presenting in your online classroom. There needs to be signs that you are in fact attending, again, reflected in the physical presence. There needs to be forms of engagement and collaboration with the students, getting the students to help each other out or to help you out where appropriate, of course. 

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What kind of sense of belongingness are you providing in this online learning community? It could be something in as simple as using the pronoun, we, instead of, you. For example, telling them, "You need to read Chapter 1" saying, "We are learning about Chapter 1 this week." 
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This is really going to help with your approachability. The more -- the higher the sense of the community, the more approachable you will seem. And these interactions need to be ongoing and reciprocal throughout the semester. 
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Finally, and this is a theme of this presentation, you are a real person. So reminding them of the human experience that you are, in fact, a human being and not a robot. So we're going to talk more about how the instructor can remind students that we're human, but also remembering that students are human as well. 
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So some things to remember about social presence. It exists on a spectrum. There's lots of gray area, and I know the psychologist is here to talk about the spectrum and gray areas so it's not a big shocker, but it's really to emphasize this point that there's always room for improvement. 
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There's these little things we can do each semester to enhance our courses. And don't, you know, don't feel overwhelmed with the amount that we're presenting here today. So start thinking about how you're going to achieve the same experience you provide in your face-to-face classroom that you are in the online classroom. 
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This is where a lot of instructors feel uneasy and start to feel anxious. And it is okay. I know when I first started teaching online, I had that same thought. How am I going to reflect the face-to-face classroom experience in this online setting? I feel like I'm better in person than I am online. 
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So if you feel that way, it's okay. Totally normal. So the next thing I want to talk about are these different opportunities we have to enhance our social presence. Now, each of these three areas is going to be important because it's going to determine what method you're going to use in your course. 
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I'm going to briefly introduce these opportunities. And then Amy and I are going to elaborate on these more specific methods throughout the presentation. So the first one is student to instructor. And this is what we often think when we think of social presence, is how can I interact more with my students? 
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So think about how you're acting with, interacting with your students as a class, but also on an individual basis. This is going to include things like feedback, your availability, your participation in the class, and also what kind of support you provide, and if you're providing some positive support. 

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The second area is going to be the student-to-student interaction. So how are your students interacting with each other? Are they interacting with each other? What kind of opportunities are you providing them with to have teamwork activities, to have collaborative activities? Do they do things like discussion forums? Any kind of brainstorming activities? 
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Are they required to do a reflection on an assignment or at the end of the class? Do they introduce themselves to one another? The English department uses peer reviews. Could you use that in some way? 
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Are they having an opportunity to share information about themselves or research that they found and their experiences and applying it to the course information? 

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Lastly, we have this student to content interaction. Now this is one that we often overlook because it's not really what we think of as in interaction, because it's not between two human beings. It's between the student and the course materials. So think about how your students are interacting with the course materials, the information presented, and the assignments. When online students are asked which of these three opportunities is the most important to them. This is always rated as number one. This is often overlooked, again, because it's not this human to human interaction. So this may be an area because it's important to students and is often overlooked. Might be a good starting point for you in enhancing your social presence. So there's two major areas that we can talk about with student content. First, how does your course look? How is the course designed? Is it intuitive for students? Is it easy for them to navigate? Do they know where to go to access materials? Do they know where to go to submit assignments? Do they know how to navigate the course? We know a lot of times students will need direct guidance on that. And it's up to us to provide that for them and to help them understand how to navigate our sites. And all of our sites are different. Now, the second part of it is how are students engaging with the course materials? So are the assignments relevant to their career or academic paths? Are the topics of interest to the students? Another way to enhance instructor presence that we'd like to talk through today is to focus on communication with your students. You have opportunities before the semester starts, during the first week of class, and then beyond to communicate with your students to let them know that you're there on the other end of Sakai. 
>> Amy: That's right. And so these -- this is a great introduction to instructor presence or those social interactions in an online class. So the question is how then do you apply these interactions in your class? And we can really start with before the semester starts. You know, within the first few days of before the semester begins, your roster is for the most part, pretty much set. There might be a little bit of fluctuation up until the first day of class, but it's usually not much. So this presents a great opportunity for an initial instructor to student social interaction. Meaning a day or two before the semester starts, make that initial connection with your students. Send them an email, welcoming them to your class, maybe mentioning a few things they can look forward to or expect during the semester. And also letting them know that during this time, you're all going to be in it together. And that you're looking forward to starting the semester with them. You're simply letting them know, I'll be your instructor. This opportunity is also a chance to let them know when you plan on publishing your course site. This is very helpful because it just lets them know when they can expect to see it when they log into Sakai. And if you're sending this greeting from within Sakai, be sure that you're using the email tool before the semester starts rather than the announcements tool. If you use the announcements tool, it's likely to not reach your students' connect mail. So you want to go ahead and send it from the email tool. Then once the semester starts, if we put ourselves in the shoes or in this case, in the chairs of our online students, especially our new students who may be taking online college level courses for the first time this fall, there'll be no instructor waiting for them in the classroom to start off that first day of class on the right foot. Many students won't automatically know how to find things in your course site, or what your expectations are, or how the course will unfold over the semester. So a couple of great ways to figuratively greet them at the door, so to speak, of your online class is to make sure your overview page, your course overview page contains your contact information. This first page is the one that your students see upon entering the course. And it also makes that first impression on them. Is your overview page welcoming to your students? Try to make it approachable and friendly. And students should know what class they're entering when they click on your site. Some of the information you might include here might be your name, could be a picture of yourself, kind of thinking in terms of greeting them at the door as they enter the course, they'll see you. You should include your contact information. Your email address is especially important, and you might want to think about including your virtual office hours. Setting and maintaining virtual office hours allow students to see you as approachable. And it's reassuring to them to know when you're available to them. Also, given this often-asynchronous environment of online learning virtual office hours also gives students a similar opportunity to talk with you that they would be allowed to do in a face-to-face setting. So it kind of simulates that environment for them. In consideration of their time as well as your time, let students know here in your overview page, when they should expect an email response from you. And Marisa has actually a quick anecdote about that, just kind of considering your time and your student's time with virtual offices. 

>> Marisa: So on a lot of our syllabi, we write expect a response within 24 or 48 hours. But last year I attended a professional development session on online instruction. And a professor from ECU kind of had an interesting idea. He gave his students very specific time restraints on kind of his work times. So for example, he would tell them Monday through Thursday, 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM and Friday 9:00 AM to 1:00 AM I'm sitting at my desk. I can answer emails very quickly then, of course, unless I'm in a meeting. And so it'll be, you know, at the most 12 hours to get back to you. After that or before that, it's going to probably take up to 24 hours for a response. And on the weekends, it'll take about 48 hours for me to respond. So this is a good idea because it tells students your good times to be contacted and when they can get that quicker response back. And it also reminds them that you have boundaries and that you are indeed a human being and not here to answer emails 24/7.

>> Amy: That's absolutely right. So during the first week of the semester, many of our instructors do hold virtual orientation sessions with their students, sort of these synchronous meetings with our students, which is a great way to establish instructor presence. However, if you're not required to do this, a great substitute is to post a couple of videos on a subpage in the lessons area of your course site. One of those videos might be an introduction video where you tell your students a little bit about yourself and what they might look forward to during the class. That would probably be just a short video. But then another video idea might be to have an orientation video. And Marisa mentioned that a little bit earlier. A benefit to you is that the orientation videos really cut down on the amount of emails that you receive at the beginning of the semester, where students ask you, where do I find this? Or how do I do that in our course site? But kind of keeping that in mind, a good tip during that first week or maybe first week or two, is that if you do start to receive three or four emails from students all asking you the same question, consider sending out a high priority announcement to them, to the whole class to address the issue. It's likely that more than just three or four of those students are having that same question. And during that first week, you could also consider posting another video in the orientation area, kind of addressing that issue, but then follow that up with an announcement to let them know that you've posted an additional video there. Many of them will have probably already gone through and watched those videos and won't be aware that you have posted another one, unless you send out that announcement. This initial communication will help students develop a sense of intimacy or familiarity with you. Addressing their potential concerns right away at the beginning of the semester is a great opportunity to show concern and interest for them. And beyond the first week, there's many opportunities to connect with your students and create instructor presence in your class. I'm going to turn it back over to Marisa to share what can happen in week two and beyond.

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>> Marisa: It helps if I unmute myself. So Amy told us all about what we do before the semester starts and during Week 1. So let's talk about the rest of the semester in terms of communication, some good ideas that we can enhance our social presence with. So I have three areas listed here. This is definitely not an exhaustive list, but there are three major areas that we can focus on and talk about. They're easy to make some small changes. So the first is personalized feedback. Article after article that I read really emphasize the importance of personalized feedback and how students really appreciate it. Some general rules first about personalized feedback before I get into all the ins and outs here is that first we want it to be consistent. And we want it to be meaningful and thoughtful. So simply writing things like, "Good job." on their feedback, that's not really helpful. It's not telling them what they did right and it's also not telling them what they did wrong. So try to make it, you know, as elaborate as you -- your brain has space for. The second part is we want it to be timely. When students have to do another similar assignment and they haven't had feedback from the first one yet, you're not really helping them. So give them these ways that they can improve so that when they do that next assignment, they're ready to go. And this is really going to help with psychological and social distance as well. Remember, students in online classes, especially during our COVID time here, we feel isolated. So this will help them if we get back to them in a timely manner. Last, you want to be specific. Now, like you, I have many general statements I give to students about developing their ideas, awkward grammar, or whatever you want to focus on. But be specific. Mention something that they included in their assignment.

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This is going to tell the student that you're reading their work and they're going to feel more seen and that you actually read it, and then didn't give them this canned response. So what are some of these specific ways? One way that I found effective and that I've read about in quite a bit of the research is this idea of individual communications, which is email. So when you're providing feedback to them, you're starting with their name. Hi, Sarah. And then you go into your feedback. Okay. This is a direct. It starts it like a conversation and you're sending it directly to them so that you can kind of go back and forth to help them understand what they did wrong and how they can improve. Because the fact of the matter is, most students are not looking at our grade book comments. And we spend a lot of hours entering those. So this may be a more effective way to get them to understand the feedback, but also, first to read it. The second part of this is our style of feedback in communication. So there's these ideas of what we call bubble wrapping or the compliment sandwich. For those of you who work in the Phillips building, you know I used the phrase compliment sandwich when I talk about how I provide my feedback, or I start it on a positive note, the meat in the sandwich is what they need to improve upon in my feedback. And then I end on a positive note. And bubble wrap is the same idea. Amy and I both attended a session in a conference last year on online instruction, and this one instructor talked about this bubble wrap style of communication. So this idea that our students are fragile and we kind of need to wrap up this bad news and cushion it so that it's not so devastating to them, as it often seems. And with that, we need to do things like using appropriate tone, being positive, showing we care, being thoughtful and careful about our language, and offering as much help as we can. So again, this idea of starting with a positive, helping them to understand these points that they need to work on, and then ending on a positive note as well. We know that our students are stressed out in general. But especially with COVID, they're dealing with a lot of extra stressors that they typically wouldn't be experiencing. By being positive, approachable, this is going to ease their anxiety towards your class. So remember that. We are one of the support systems for them and this encouragement and continuous support is really helpful and it will ease their anxiety. And I understand we have a lot of students, sometimes mentally we are exhausted from it. Just act like you care. It will help. Now, one way you can do that is when students don't turn work in. So this kind of gets into when do we need to reach out to students? So a lot of times when students don't turn in work, we give them their zero. We move on. When students don't turn in their work, reach out to them. It could be simple as emailing. "Hey, Amy. I noticed you missed your assignment this week. Is everything okay? Did you not understand something about the assignment? Do you not understand our deadlines?" Because it may be something that they don't understand, or they may have this tremendous personal stress are happening. But this more importantly makes them feel seen and makes them feel heard. You've noticed that they're missing that week. And sometimes when we just give them a zero and move on, they don't really get that. And it lets them feel less isolated in this online setting, which is one of the major things that most online students complain about is feeling isolated, feeling anonymous. And it reminds us too, they're humans and we don't want them to get lost. We want to help them. Another way we can enhance our social presence is through announcements. And Amy talked about this already. So I'll hit on this briefly. So announcements are great for consistent communication. So you should be providing some kind of weekly announcement to your students, just kind of telling them what are we doing this week. This is also a great way to provide overall feedback when there are changes made to the site, any kind of reminders or updates, and this reminds them that you're there. Just that weekly communication announcement, you click a box and send it to everybody. It's super easy. You're there. You're interacting with them. Just be sure to email your announcements. That's my biggest piece of advice. Now, this third part is what I started talking about at the beginning of the presentation, are the student-content interactions. Remember this is the most overlooked one, but this is also what students like the most. So start thinking about what kind of assignments students complete in your class. Thinking about, is it relevant? Is it practical for them? There's this idea in psychology called the self-referential effect, where if we're trying to remember information and we can relate it to ourselves in some way, whether we've had, you know, we can pull from personal examples, something that has happened to us, we're going to be more likely to remember it. And the same goes for students and their engagement in the class. If they can apply it to themselves in some way, they're going to be much more engaged. So for example, in my Psych 241 class, which is developmental psychology, I know that most of my students coming in are nursing or OTA students or going into the medical field. I have a lot of PA, PT, med school. You name it. I got it. Okay. So I try to tailor the class to them so that we're focusing on some of these healthcare issues that are of interest to them, but they're also practical for them and helping them conceptualize ideas in their nursing classes as well. So one of the things I do is I pull some topics that I know are going to be of interest. So things like death and dying, sexual health, prenatal care issues, relationships, nutrition. I also globalize my class to get them to understand different cultures. And I have an emphasis on the Latinx population, because that is the largest immigrant group in the State of North Carolina. So again, you can see how it's relevant and practical for them. Another great way to get students engaged is videos. We know videos in general have a positive effect on the learning environment. We know that when we're talking about things like selfie videos, or just audio clips, it really helps when students can see and hear you. So this is going to help with that student-content interaction, because they're hearing you explain something, but it also helps with that student-instructor interactions. They feel like they're interacting with you, again, it shows you're there, emphasizing that physical presence and that you are indeed a human being. So some examples of other videos you can create. There's lots. These are just a few. You could simply make a selfie video online explaining a concept. You can model or demonstrate a skill. You can respond to student questions. If you seem to be getting a lot of the same question that might be a quick easy way just to answer everyone's questions. Sharing feedback as a group, but also on an individual basis. You can make some narrated lectures. You can show them how to think out questions, which is what I have pictured here in my very messy slide that I have written all over, where I give them multiple choice questions, and I show them how to think it out, highlighting the important information and why answer B is correct and why the other ones are incorrect. Something that Amy mentioned earlier was these how to and navigation video. So how to submit a certain type of assignment. That's really important. Where to go. Do they go immediately to lessons for everything? Or should they go see their announcements first? So this is really important. And it really does cut down on questions. Just a basic rule for making videos. Try to keep it at 10 minutes. That is where the human attention span stops. We kind of check out after 10 minutes. So try to keep those selfie videos, navigation videos under 10. Now, for things like narrated lectures or explaining a concept, you may be thinking 10 minutes is definitely not long enough and you're right. It's not. So try to break it up with some kind of activity. You may want to insert questions, concept checks. There's a lot of different things you can do. So the bottom line here is how are your students interacting with the material? Is it an active learning process or is it passive? Are they just reading a chapter, taking a multiple-choice quiz? That's a passive learning process and that's not really helpful to them. So try to think about ways to get it more interactive with the material as they're learning. Help them to realize that this information is applicable to their career path or daily life, and it's going to make it more relevant thus, they're going to be more engaged with the material. So now that you've heard some specific methods to enhance social presence, you may be feeling some anxiety towards implementing this in your online course. Amy and I are going to speak about a few common hesitancies that instructors express. So the first thing I always hear instructors say is, "Ah, I'm overwhelmed. I have no idea where to start." So we sometimes feel like we're in this room of doors. And there's all these different doors and we want to open them all at once. These are educators and we want to make everything great and beautiful. Don't do that. Okay. Be reasonable and realistic about what changes you can make. There's a lot of different ways. So think of this room as these different social presence methods. You can only open one door at a time, go into the room, enhance your class in that way, and then shut the door, and then move on to the next one. So make these small changes. We're just giving you some examples and ideas today.

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Pick one or two that's easy for you to insert into your fall classes. And if you feel uncomfortable doing something, totally okay, don't do it. So speaking of discomfort, one of the things I hear instructors saying more about, I don't want to do this, I don't feel comfortable with this, I don't know how to do this, is sharing our personality. So what does that mean? So our personality, remember, makes you who you are, makes us human beings, and again, not this faceless robot behind the computer. So just be who you are. Students will accept you for the most part in who you are, and it's a very natural thing for us to do. We do know that students prefer certain traits in their instructors. Don't worry, you do not have to change your personality as educators. We -- Can everyone hear me?

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>> Yes. 

>> No. 

>> Marisa: Okay. Some of you were saying you can't hear me. All right, sorry. So we know that students prefer certain qualities of personality in their instructors. Again, don't worry, we all have these as educators. Now, the first one is competence. Students want to know that you know what you're talking about. And we do, we've gone through training, we've gone through graduate school, we are experts in our field. So this should not be a worry at all. You are competent, it's okay. The second is preparedness. Have you put thought into your assignment? So this goes back into how engaging are your materials for your students? Is it interesting to them? Did you take time? Are there a lot of typos? That sort of thing. They want to know that you are taking this seriously. And the last two parts are your trustworthiness and your approachability. Do they feel comfortable asking you questions? Are you likable? Are you warm? Do you show concern? Can they rely on you for support? That's what we mean by trustworthiness. Now another personality trait that students often like is a sense of humor. Now, a sense of humor becomes very natural to me. Those of you that know me know I'm a very giggly person and I tend to make jokes quite a bit. Just for example, when I do my narrated lectures, even though I'm the only audience member and also the presenter, I make jokes to myself. Sometimes they are super bad dad jokes or puns, and I totally laugh at myself, and that's okay. This is telling something to my students about my personality, that I enjoy humor and that I like it. So include that in your presentations. If you're comfortable, if you're -- if you don't feel like you're a humorous person, don't force it, okay? Now, two other ways that we really focus on sharing our personality, but also -- waiting for it to come up. I don't see anything. This next slide is talking about sharing our voice and ourselves. So we know that just simply sharing our voice is really helpful in an online classroom environment. It's going to make for a more human experience, and students really appreciate it and they prefer it. They also report that it feels like a more real learning environment, meaning that I felt like I was in the classroom, that my teacher was talking to me, I heard his or her voice as they were explaining things. Now, voice is also really great because it allows us to emphasize certain pieces of information that may get lost in text. There it is. Okay. So and it's great too, because it, if you're uncomfortable with the video, just sharing your voice is an easy thing you can do that doesn't require a lot of effort. Now, it's also important for students to see you. So try to get comfortable with a selfie video if possible, because it's really important because it does give students social information to nonverbal language. And again, visual proof that you're there, you are a real person, this is what I look like. Now it's also important to acknowledge that in this COVID working environment, we have been using a lot of these selfie videos, just in Microsoft teams, Zoom, you maybe FaceTiming with your family a bit more if you can't see them. We're sharing our voices, we're -- a lot of us are sharing our images, both me, and my students, and our colleagues, I know in CALLA, this is how we meet every week. I get to see my -- this is how I get to see my colleagues faces. So it's become a little bit more normalized for sure. So you may feel a bit more comfortable with it, but the main point I want to make here for the selfie videos is that we're really enhancing the nonverbal communication. Nonverbal communication is so important, especially when teaching because a lot of communication, because we are human beings, a lot of it is nonverbal. So it's important that students get that in the online classroom. So we have it in our face to face classroom. We need to make it part of this online learning experience.

>> Amy: Absolutely Marisa. And kind of with that said, that last point, making videos, really is a pain point for some instructors. It does -- It is a source of anxiety when considering how to implement instructor presence in some instructor's classes, the idea of creating videos becomes the focus of their hesitation. They think either I don't have any video equipment or I'm just not comfortable being in a video. And that's completely normal. I've talked with a lot of faculty members, especially on the second point about not being, feeling comfortable being in a video. So right off the bat, we do have some quick advice for you on this. And it would really be to keep it simple and relatively inexpensive. This is an example of a DIY tripod that I've actually used myself. And the thought is, is that, if you have a cell phone, you can make a video for your students. So just, you know, Mason jar with a rubber band can hold up your phone or just doing a quick search on Google. There's a few other ideas out there, maybe cutting the lip on a cup, or using a folded card, or even some binder clips, which are readily found in many home offices. So there's some tools out there that you can use to actually create some quick videos, but then that kind of comes down to the idea of, again, I may not feel comfortable being in the video, and it's certainly okay if you're feeling a little nervous. Marisa and I actually -- Well, I should back up just a second and say, this could be for any number of reasons. It could be due to the sound of your voice. You may not like the way that it sounds in a video. You may have reservations about appearing on camera itself or sharing, right now, especially during COVID, many of us are at home and sharing your personal environment with your students. You may not be comfortable with the idea of doing that either. And so Marisa and I do have our own stories about becoming a little bit more comfortable with video over time. Me in particular, I started out teaching public school way back when, many moons ago. And this was actually when YouTube was brand new, and I did not want to become a YouTuber by any means, but I did want to flip my classroom. And so I did a little bit of research and I found a way that I could do that with just about four or five whiteboards, a marker, and a flip camera. And -- Oh, can you hear me? I see Zach's not able to.

^M00:37:49

^M00:37:52

Okay, great. 

^M00:37:53

^M00:37:56

Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thanks for the confirmation. Okay. Let me see, I'll bring the mic up just a little bit closer here to, hopefully, that'll improve it a little bit. I know in the middle of the day, it just seems that there's -- there maybe a little bit of a drain on the internet in general. Okay. All right. So like I was saying, back when I was teaching public school, I did not want to become a YouTuber. So I just, I did -- I went low tech and I used a flip camera and whiteboard, and I also had a document camera available in the classroom and I would use the flip camera to record that. So this was very basic, very simple tools. But what you can see in common with these pictures is that I was not showing my face. I would only show my arm or my hand. And that's all I was comfortable with when I first started creating videos. If that's about where you are, that's absolutely fine. You know, students still have that opportunity to see what it was that I was talking about as well as listening to my voice. Just kind of continuing my personal story a little bit, after I left the classroom, I was asked to narrate videos at, I went to go work for an educational website. So I got a little bit more comfortable working with videos and narrating for them. And then eventually I really just wanted to make a connection through video. And so I began -- became comfortable, more comfortable with recording myself. But even to this day, I still have some reservations about being in video, but I'm quite a bit more used to it now. Marisa, what's your experience with video?

^M00:39:18

^M00:39:26

Marisa are you there?

^M00:39:27

^M00:39:36

Okay. We'll give her just a couple more seconds. It looks like she may have bumped out of the session for just a moment.

^M00:39:43

^M00:39:47

Okay. I'll give her just about 15 more seconds or so to see if she can come back in. Okay. She just sent me a note and saying that she's working on coming back in. Sorry about that.

^M00:39:57

^M00:40:01

So while we're waiting, I'm just curious in the chat, if you have -- if you already feel comfortable making videos for your students, just let us know, just type in, maybe how you record them. Do you use your webcam or your cell phone? How are you comfortable recording videos?

^M00:40:17

^M00:40:24

>> Marisa: Okay. I'm back. I'm back. Sorry, you all. 

>> Amy: Hey Marisa. I was just having folks reflect a little bit before you have a chance to tell your story about becoming comfortable with videos, just on what they use, if they create a video. So folks are just typing in now. 

>> Marisa: Sorry.

>> Amy: Looks like a few people use webcams.

^M00:40:41

^M00:40:44

Let's see, Janice is asking a question. What do you do when waiting for students to give answers or responses? Jeopardy music? I love the recorded classes [laughter]. That's a fun idea, Janice. All right. Thank you so much. Screencast-O-Matic, PowerPoint narration. Yeah, those are all great ways. And we're going to touch on a few of those ideas in just a little bit. So Marisa I'm going to go ahead and turn it back over to you. How did you become more comfortable with video? 

^M00:41:09
>> Marisa: So in the spring I had a Psych 150 class, which is usually one of their first college courses. And I had a classroom mostly like 90 to 95% of high schoolers. 
^M00:41:22
And we know they need a little bit more hand holding. So there is a couple of different opportunities I had to inject some videos simply out of necessity, and that's how I became more comfortable with it. 

^M00:41:34:15
So the first was a snow day. I decided to narrate it, my first narrative lecture, only because it was the hardest material that we were covering all semester and I didn't want us to fall behind, and I wanted to make sure we stayed on track. 
^M00:41:51
And again, with the high schoolers, making sure they're doing what they need to do. When I first started recording it, I realized, "Wow, I really hate the sound of my own voice." 
^M00:42:01
Just sort of an example, my whole family calls me Minnie Mouse. So my voice has been made fun of my entire life. I also realized I had to just read it, of North Carolina Twain on some words. 
^M00:42:11
So just learning to let that go and these little quirks about your voice, it's okay, everybody has them. The fact of the matter is you're probably noticing it more than everybody else. 
^M00:42:23
And of course, the second opportunity was COVID. So now I have this completely online class, full of high schoolers who don't know what to do and then a college class still. 
^M00:42:33
So I really wanted to reflect the same experience that they did have in their seated class. So one of the first things I did is I did some update selfie videos, and just even looking at that image is making me cringe right now. 
^M00:42:47
So I did it you all, but I thought it was a really critical period for students to see me and hear my voice. Because there was a section in time where we really didn't know what was going on and what that meant for us moving forward, but it was important for students to see me. 
^M00:43:05
I also did some navigation videos the first couple of weeks. So students knew exactly where to go to watch the lectures, to submit their assignments, and how their assignments would change. 
^M00:43:17
And finally, I did these narrated lectures. And I wanted, again, to reflect the same or similar experience that they would have in the classroom. I used the same lecture slides, I had some similar activities. 
^M00:43:30
So I broke up my lectures with activities and also showing them other videos. And all these together really impacted them and showed them that I was still there helping them move through the semester. 
^M00:43:40
And I got a lot of positive feedback from students about it telling me I had made the transition really easy on them, and they felt confident to finish the class. 
^M00:43:50
Because for a lot of them, this was their first online class. Another note about recordings, especially the narrated lectures, I myself am a perfectionist and I wanted my lectures to be perfect, not realizing, in class, they're not always perfect. 

^M00:44:05
So realizing that, and don't waste all this time doing re-recordings. My first couple ones took hours and hours because I wanted them to be perfect. Do not do that. In fact, one of my lectures, my dog is barking in the last five to 10 minutes the whole time. 
^M00:44:20
And at first, I ignored it, and then I just started laughing and said, "I'm sorry, you all. My dog keeps barking. It is what it is. If you can't hear me email me and I'll let you know what I said." 
^M00:44:30
But keep those mistakes in. It makes it feel more real. It's a human experience. You don't have this perfect fortress of solitude and a perfect lecture for your students.

^M00:44:41
>> Amy: I agree completely. So what does that mean for all of you? What it really means when it comes to creating this instructor to student social interaction, it's starting from where you feel comfortable. A lot of you have shared that you're already creating videos and you're maybe trying out new ways of doing that for the upcoming semester, but some of you, this may be a brand-new experience. And so maybe you just want to start with audio. You just want to start with recording your voice and that's a good place to start. Some instructors do use audio recordings for their lectures, some provide readings, audio of their readings in class and poetry. Personally, in grad school, I had an instructor provide audio feedback on projects that I submitted and it was great because I could hear her emphasize particular points and I was able to really get a feel for what she really understood in my project just through her voice. And so it was a great way for her to connect with me. If you're maybe comfortable with using your cell phone recording supplemental or environmental comment -- content that's related to your lecture, and maybe narrate that content, that's a great idea too. That's a good start. Students really do benefit from seeing the outside world as it's related to your content whenever possible. And if you're feeling maybe really shy about appearing on video, maybe you want to try my low-tech idea and just set up a camera and a whiteboard or a piece of paper and record that as you're working through particular problems, if you're working on math or sciences, but if you don't want to go low tech and you maybe want to be a little bit more high tech, Durham tech does offer some tools for you to choose from. At the bottom of the page here is a go link to our Sakai meetings tool, which is actually what we are in right now today. It's sort of a modified version, but we do have meetings in Sakai. You'll just have to turn it on in your course menu to set up a synchronous meeting with your students. And a great part about that is you can actually draw right here on the whiteboard, if you need to emphasize particular points to your students. We also have a tool for recording. Well, actually, you could create narrated PowerPoint presentations if you want to move beyond just doing the live lectures. You could, for example, create a narrative PowerPoint presentation where you then mark up the slides too. And if you want to dip your toe, so to speak, in the pool of showing yourself on camera, you can maybe show yourself at the beginning of the presentation and then turn that off so that the focus is then on your -- on the presentation itself. And at the bottom of this slide, we have a go link to our narrate -- narrating PowerPoint presentation resource page. Then maybe one day when you're feeling particularly inspired or feeling as though you really want to connect with your students if you haven't done it yet, then say, try a short one-minute video. If it's at the beginning of the semester and you just want to jump in, this could be your introduction video, where again, you share a couple of things about yourself and what you enjoy about teaching the course. And then maybe if it's later in the semester, do you want to kind of create the selfie video, that could be a quick video to share what you're looking forward to in the upcoming week or unit or a new thought you've had about that particular week's learning material. One more quick tool I wanted to touch on that Durham Tech provides us is Warpwire. It's a tool for creating and managing video and audio content from within Sakai. And I know just from reading the contents, I'm sorry, the comments here, a few of you have had experience with Warpwire already but it is integrated with the Sakai, and each of your Sakai sites has its own media library where you can then build video content for your students and then embed it, say, in lessons where your students can then view it. And here is the go link for that, go.durhamtech.edu/warpwire. If you're interested in looking at more information about that. But what's kind of neat about it is that from here within your media library, if you click the plus button, you have quite a few options in creating videos. The first option is the camera capture, which uses your webcam on your computer to create that selfie video that Marisa was mentioning a little bit earlier in the presentation. And you could, if you wanted to use Warpwire to create a screen capture, which would be, say those orientation videos or those demonstration videos, and the screen capture just captures the entire screen and then you can narrate that as well. You also have the option to upload files to Warpwire. You can do that from your computer or your mobile device. And if you do visit this go link here at the bottom, we have instructions for you about how to use your mobile device to upload videos from your cell phone to Warpwire. So that could be a really useful tool. So if you're new to making videos, you might think that it'll take too long to make them for your class. That is a common concern. All of us do have competing priorities in our lives. It's difficult to carve out time to relax for a few minutes, not to mention the time it might take to think through what you might say in a video. So our best advice for this is to approach it with some pragmatism. In real life like Marisa mentioned earlier, things can happen; a dog might bark, the doorbell might ring, a child or spouse might walk by, me in particular, my cat is always jumping up on my desk and it gets in the frame and gets in the video or on the webcam. It happens. You might feel compelled to rerecord your audio or video content again and again until it's just right.

^M00:50:00

Marisa and I both understand that and we get it. We've both been there. But the truth is, is that you just need to be okay with the concept of good enough. Again, normal household noises are definitely okay. From your student's perspective, they're simply seeing who you are in all of these, what you might consider imperfections actually shows that, it allows them to feel more connected to you. They'll see that you're human and that you're dealing with some of the things that they can relate to in their own households. But if you do end up rerecording your videos, in both Marisa's and my experience, we know that after some time, most folks just get tired of having to do that over and over. And we'll just eventually over time begin to feel okay with, it's good enough and to just let the video go. Record it once and just go ahead and let it go. A quick tip to cut down on rerecording, say narrated PowerPoint presentations, is to use the pause button, which is up in the upper left hand corner. So if something is happening in the household and you need to stop really quickly and let the dust settle a bit, hit that pause button and then come on back and you can continue recording your video from there. So that might help cut down on some of the rerecordings as well. And then as the semester unfolds, you'll find your groove with what is good enough for that particular week, because at the end of the day, it's just about the content and message of your audio or video content, not the production value. Your intention is to connect with your students and creating videos is just the medium you've selected to try to do just that. So we've talked through a number of audio and video strategies you can choose from to create instructor to student, or student to content connections, such as those audio only recordings, specific content recordings, which could be environmental out in the world. You could go low tech like I did. You could create narrated PowerPoint presentations of your content, or even demonstration videos using Warpwire, or you could create selfie videos in which you kind of simulate talking to your students. So kind of keeping these options in mind and thinking earlier about those different opportunities for social interactions. We'd like to take a second here toward the end of the presentation to just have you guys share it one more time. And if you've been with us for our webinars this week, we've kind of used more and more of the Sakai meetings tools. And so today we're going to try one more tool. And in just a moment, I'm going to have you respond by sharing one way you've provided instructor presence in your online class. Maybe we've kind of jogged your thoughts about it. And you're realizing that you're already doing this and we would love to have an opportunity for you to share with each other. So in just a second, on the right hand side of your screen, I'm going to reveal a toolbar and we're going to have you click the top button in that toolbar, which will fly out a bunch of options. And we need you to select the text option. It'll be on the far left. So you're going to click the top button and then the text button, and then you're going to click and drag to create a text box for yourself. Once you do that, the tricky thing is, is that text box is going to disappear, but there's going to be a cursor there, kind of a text cursor. And if you look carefully, you'll be able to see it. So you just drag the box and then you can just begin typing. So I think we're going to go ahead and give it a try. This is a brand new activity. So I'm going to go ahead, clear the slide, and I'm revealing that tool on the right, and then have you click the top button and select the text tool, and then go ahead and drag a box for yourself. Great. We see people kind of testing things out. This looks great.

^M00:53:42 

^M00:53:50

Fantastic. We see that somebody has created videos for their assignments.

^M00:53:54

^M00:54:03

Dorothy has a weekly meeting just to shoot the breeze and talk with her students. That's a great way to feel connected with them. Checking emails is another great idea. Someone's saying that they love this writing tool. It is a pretty cool idea to do this with your students if you have some time at the end of the session. Doing a weekly meeting, working out math problems with them, weekly forums to keeping them ongoing, doing an About Me video, scheduling check in meetings with students. That's a great idea, kind of individualized as well whenever possible. That's great. We'll do just a few more seconds here. It's kind of neat watching everybody's names flying around on the screen [laughter]. Doing a welcome video. Fantastic. All right. I know you guys are liking this. So I'm going to go ahead and go to the next slide. 

^M00:54:55 

^M00:54:58 

All right, Marisa. I'm going to turn it back over to you.

^M00:55:01

^M00:55:04

>> Marisa: All right. So we heard a lot of different methods today about enhancing social presence. So to kind of wrap everything up, I want to give you some pointers, things to remember. So the first is keep it manageable. Do not overextend yourself. Don't feel like you have to completely overhaul your course. In fact, do not do that. You want to make some small changes. So every semester as educators, we make these little small changes to enhance our courses, think of social presence in that way as well. Amy recommends this is how we handle accessibility too. So for example, if you think, you know what I really want to add these narrated lectures, pick those, and just focus on those, and move forward. Or if you want to add some introductory or orientation videos that helping them to navigate the site at the beginning of the class, just do that or some kind of biweekly video updates. Keep it simple. So it's also important to acknowledge the reality versus the ideal. 
^M00:56:02
Ideally, we'd like to all have this in our classes, all of these great things, and be super supportive and encouraging to all of our students. I know in my department, some of my instructors may have to, up to like 170 students for the fall semester. And that's online students. 
^M00:56:22
I realize it is very mentally and emotionally draining to provide support and positivity to that many people on a constant basis. And also, for you introverts it's socially draining. So I do recognize that. 
^M00:56:37  ^M00:56:39
So just try to dedicate a little bit of each time a time during the day, just in these little spurts, when you feel yourself in a more positive mood. Now we also have those cases of maybe some angry or rude students who may not be as pleasant to deal with. 
^M00:56:58
Know when to walk away from the computer. It's okay to walk away from the computer sometimes and let things process and come back when you're in a more positive mood. Remember, you're a human being. 
^M00:57:09
Sometimes things are going to get under your skin, or you're just not in the right frame of mind to handle it. And this goes to this idea of knowing when to protect your time. We are in this remote working environment. 
^M00:57:22:17
And I know myself I've been overworking at times, I shouldn't be. For example, this summer I had a meeting with a student from eight o'clock to nine o'clock at night for just a quick five minute question and it ended up being an hour. 


^M00:57:38
And I had this epiphany, it's nine o'clock, I'm meeting with a student, this is atypical. And I had that moment of I'm sacrificing my personal time here. And I reminded the student of that as well. I was trying to get things immediately taken care of. In the fall, I won't be doing that. 
^M00:57:57
I'm going to be more protective of my time and I'm recommending my faculty be protective of their time as well as we move forward, because it's so easy to kind of let that go. Now, how can you incorporate social presence? 
^M00:58:11
Remember that strong instructor presence is going to result in a positive student attitude towards the course. Do what works for you. If you heard something today that you just feel like, "Eek! No, I'm not doing that no way." that's okay. Only do what you're comfortable with. 
^M00:58:29
Remember there's no one size fits all to an instructor and social presence or instruction for that matter. We all teach very different topics. You just have to do what works for you and what works in your classes and with your students.

^M00:58:41

^M00:58:46

>> Amy: All right. And we do have just a couple more slides to kind of wrap up presentation, but we wanted to pause and just see what questions you all might have, maybe about the different types of social interactions or ways that you can use the tools that Durham Tech supports to help you provide those social interactions with your students. So I'll give you just a moment, see if there's any questions that you might have. You can, after the session, if you think of something, we'd love to hear from you. You could always send us an email as well. Janice asks a great question. She says, is there any way to export the meetings recordings? And Karen and Becky, they're both in on this meeting now. And I know there's some specifics, Becky, about that. I believe the recordings are set to private once they're made. But they can be exported, Becky, if you can verify that.

^M00:59:41

^M00:59:47

Oh, looks like Becky might have just been bumped out. Okay. Karen is responding. Okay. That's a great question, Janice. 

^M00:59:53 

^M01:00:13 

Okay. Jamie says that she has exported the meeting's recordings to YouTube. Karen says, "Yes, they can definitely be downloaded or the link can be made unprotected and shared. Absolutely. But be aware of student privacy." That's absolutely right. Thank you, Karen, for pointing that out. One thing to be aware of with the recordings with, that you record in a particular class with your students in on the session, they're students -- the students are protected in the sense that you should not share that video with another class, that's due to FERPA regulations. Yeah. Karen, thank you. So for FERPA consideration to the advice document and our Sakai meetings page. Thinking of a private meeting to yourself. Yes. So Janet, if you're in that meeting all by yourself, for example, creating a presentation, because you can use those great tools to write on the slide, and there's no students in there, and you don't reference any particular students during that presentation, then yeah, you're free to use that video in another class. Speaking with the group of students, I let them know they're being recorded. Oh, Steven, that's a great idea to let students know that they're being recorded. And that's, whenever possible, that is a great idea. Okay. So if you guys have any other questions or thoughts, Marisa, again, both of us would love to hear from you. We have our email addresses here on the screen. If you've been enjoying the webinars this week, we do have a few other upcoming presentations.

>> Marisa: I am presenting on my solo project in the spring hopefully. 
^M01:01:49
Not really sure what format at this point. And what my solo project focuses on is enhancing social presence through effective communication techniques. 
^M01:01:58
And I will be using Warpwire videos as well, all three types, selfie, navigation and narrated lectures. 
^M01:02:05
I'm implementing the intervention in the fall and collecting my data, so I'll have the results presented in the spring. I hope to share some good things with you all.

^M01:02:15
>> Amy: Marisa, I'm personally looking forward to that. I think it's going to be a great presentation. And if you all are interested; we do have another webinar tomorrow. We know lots of you are already likely signed up for them, but Becky's going to be presenting on Sakai tips and hidden gems. If you're a power user in Sakai, there may be a few hidden things that you aren't aware of and Becky's going to share those. But if you're new to Sakai, this'll be a great way to kind of to check in to just see, what are some tips that maybe aren't covered in say, the intro to Sakai trading. 
^M01:02:44
And so Becky will be presenting that at noon. And we ask that if you haven't already, please sign up at training.durhamtech.edu so that we can get you on the roster and make sure that we see you tomorrow at that time. And then if you have been enjoying this week's webinars and you want to drop it again, or if you want to spread the word amongst your colleagues, we are doing an Encore presentation of this week sessions during the week of August 11. 
^M01:03:08
So we would love to see you there again if you're interested. Otherwise, we would love to see your colleagues as well. I believe before August 7th, we're going to be sending out an email of these webinar recordings from this week in addition to the handouts. So please keep an eye out for that email. And if you are an adjunct joining us today, this was a TLC sponsored event. And so my department, instructional technologies, will be submitting your adjunct teaching Institute form on your behalf. 
^M01:03:38
And if you attend two -- Oh, I went back up just to set, the colleges foundation offer's a $50 stipend per semester to those adjunct instructors who attend two or more TLC activities during the semester. So if you've attended two of these webinars, you've had a chance to earn that stipend. 

^M01:03:55
And so we do welcome you to join us again for tomorrow session as well. And then we do, Marisa and I, we do want to wish you a great day and we thank you so much for attending today. It's been great to see all of you and interact with you. And with that, that's the end of our presentation today.