Abstract:

Literature suggests that online course videos with instructor’s faces highly engage students [1]. Such videos are used to welcome students, provide orientation, explain course content, provide feedback, and summarize discussions [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7]. They also offer aspects of teacher presence (social, cognitive, and teaching aspects) that help students engage meaningfully in online courses [8], [9]. Instructor-led facilitation, using instructor-created videos can lead to greater satisfaction and an enhanced learning experience [10], [11], [12], [13]. Studies of faculty videos usually examine how teaching presence can be humanized [14] including tone, expressive language, and other engaging aspects [15]. Faculty value these aspects of teaching presence, actively seeking creative ways to extend online discussion beyond simple text and superficial exchanges [9]. However, few studies have looked at the technical aspects of video length, camera angle, lighting, setting, etc. that contribute to the humanization of these videos [16]. Using a socio-constructive perspective, this study analyzes 64 videos from four instructors in eight graduate-level online courses at a large public Canadian university. A matrix was created to code these videos by purpose (weekly summaries, course introductions, online lectures and how-to videos), content and tone (sequence, audience, emotion) and format (camerawork, picture-in-picture mode, screen activity, length, and setting) [17]. Instructor interviews clarified how these characteristics aligned to faculty-expressed pedagogy. Findings show promise for continued research: all faculty agreed that adding instructor videos can help students engage with content and feel less “disembodied”. Videos help the faculty connect to students, further increasing teacher presence. While video length depends on the purpose of the video, most instructors agreed that shorter videos maintain student attention span and subsequent engagement: instructors kept videos to less than 15 minutes. This study is the first stage of an ongoing investigation to frame an ontological system for use by other faculty and researchers to look more deeply at characteristics of instructor videos: ideally instructor videos can be optimized to better enhance student engagement.

Keywords:

Instructor-created videos, teacher presence, online learning, humanization