Instructor welcome Video

Reflection of the Instructor Welcome Video

Creating the instructor welcome video was a very challenging task.  I used PowToon (n.d) and it took me almost 6 hours to create a 90 second video.  PowToon (n.d) is much more complicated than it looks.  It was important to create a welcome video to increase social presence. According to Richardson & Swan (2003) social presence is defined as seeing the instructor as a 'real person'.  This creates a form of intimacy and builds trust. This will have an effect on the students' learning. Social presence is also one of the 3 necessary presences in forming a community of inquiry which is essential for an effective online course (Shea & Bidjerano, 2009). In order to build social presence in my online video, I discussed my family and my hobbies.  The purpose was to show them that I have a personal  life outside of teaching.

 I believe that the welcome video will also lessen transactional distance (Moore & Kearsley, 2005).

 "It is the physical distance that leads to a communication gap, a psychological space of potential misunderstandings between the instructors and the learners that has to be bridged by special teaching techniques; this is the ‘Transactional Distance" (Moore & Kearsley, 2005, p. 224). My hope is that my video (and my module) will lessen transactional distance.

My welcome video was made to promote the course I will be 'teaching' this semester.  That was not intentional as I misunderstood the instructions.  That being said, I am glad that I did because it gave me direction as to where I'd like to take this course.  Those are my key interests and I would like to create a module that I can take and use for professional development seminars.  Had I made my video generic, I could use it for other courses which would save a lot of time but truthfully I am really proud of how it turned out and I believe I will have use for it outside of this course.

Reference

Create Awesome Videos Yourself. (n.d.). Retrieved July 13, 2018, from https://www.powtoon.com

Moore, M.G., & Kearsley, G. (2005) Distance education: A systems view (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.

Richardson, J., & Swan, K. (2003). Examining social presence in online courses in relation to students' perceived learning and satisfaction.

Shea, P., & Bidjerano, T. (2009). Community of inquiry as a theoretical framework to foster "epistemic engagement" and "cognitive presence" in online education. Computers & Education, 52(3), 543. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2008.10.007