We begin with a ghost story.<\/p>\n
This story may sound familiar. It begins in a space of learning. You enter as a student. You know you will be in this place for the next two or three months with other students and an instructor. But although you know you are all there in the same space, you can\u2019t see or hear any other students. You wander alone until you discover a pre-recorded message telling you what to do. This should be reassuring, but the person in the video doesn\u2019t look like the instructor listed on your course schedule.<\/p>\n
\u201cWelcome,\u201d says the man in the video. \u201cIn this course you will learn how to apply theoretical concepts in the real world.\u201d<\/p>\n
You wander around the space. An announcement appears, welcoming you to the course. It includes a picture of the instructor listed on your schedule.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo they do exist,\u201d you think to yourself. And yet, as you look around, all the recordings you see are of someone else. This isn\u2019t really their class, you realize. Someone else built this place. It\u2019s unsettling to be in this space and feel like your instructor doesn\u2019t belong here. Maybe you don\u2019t belong here either.<\/p>\n
Eventually, you find the one place where you can talk to other students, but even this space feels strange and isolating. There\u2019s writing on the wall.<\/p>\n
Please introduce yourself.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n You can see writing by other students in the class, but the instructor never makes a comment. You come back to this room several times during the term to write more, as directed. You write replies to what other students have written, but it doesn\u2019t really feel like talking. It feels like a performance, judged by the unseen, unheard instructor who exists only in writing.<\/span><\/p>\n The weeks go by. You listen to a disembodied voice talking over a slideshow lecture. Your instructor makes their ghostly presence known through weekly announcements and in the grades that appear on your homework. On one assignment, you see a comment in addition to the grade:<\/span><\/p>\n If you would like to talk to me about your grade, please make an appointment to meet during my office hours.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n But you don\u2019t. The idea of meeting your mysterious instructor is more terrifying than a bad grade.<\/span><\/p>\n The term ends, and the doors open for the students to leave. Even though you did well, you feel unsatisfied with the experience. You can\u2019t wait to leave and put this strange, unsettling experience behind you. You learned what you were supposed to learn, but the instructor was a ghost; their presence an afterimage of a creator from long ago. Months later, you realize you\u2019ve forgotten your instructor\u2019s name, but you never forget the man in the videos.<\/span><\/p>\n My ghost story was partly inspired by the story I read last year about <\/span>automated courses that are still using the videos created by someone who has since passed away<\/span><\/a>. Sometimes it takes a true story like this to remind us that students know when an online instructor is present, and when they are absent. They know what it\u2019s like to be taught by a ghost\u2013even if that instructor is still living. This story was also a stark reminder to me as an instructional designer that it doesn\u2019t matter how well-designed a course is if the students do not feel like the instructor is actually there and present with these students, while the course is running.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n What it means for an instructor to be present in an online course was challenged by the forced shift to online teaching in the early days of the pandemic lockdown. Many teachers used Zoom or other web conferencing software to meet with students during their scheduled class times, to varying degrees of success, and varying degrees of exhaustion. Suddenly, we were not in a classroom or office and neither were our students. We saw bedrooms, kitchens, living rooms, cars, parks, and parking lots. We saw parents and kids and intrusive cats. We saw a lot of camera malfunctions, heard a lot of microphone feedback, and experienced many technical difficulties.<\/span><\/p>\n But because this was a global crisis, there was a collective understanding that it is more important to be <\/span>present<\/span><\/i> than to be <\/span>perfect<\/span><\/i>. While online students may have already experienced the ghost in the course shell, for the first time, instructors were experiencing the other side of that ghost story. Previously embodied in a physical classroom, they were now reduced to digital images, speaking into the void of black boxes; ghosts of their former selves. They found the experience just as eerie as their students. And just like a ghost who struggles to get a message to their loved ones from beyond the grave, a lot of instructors struggled to find a way to reach their students from beyond the classroom.<\/span><\/p>\n In the early days of lockdown, a colleague of mine asked for help with one of his online course videos. He always recorded his video announcements the same way he recorded his lectures: inside his office, wearing a suit, looking very formal and professional. This time he wanted to do something different. He wanted to show his students that he was also feeling the strain of lockdown, and that they were all in this lockdown together. An avid walker himself, he decided that he wanted to encourage his students to go for a walk outside, and then show himself walking outside.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHow can I do that?\u201d he asked.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n He had no idea how to make a video that did that, because he\u2019d never seen anyone make a video like that\u2013and no one to teach him.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cGo for a walk,\u201d I told him. \u201cRecord a video on your phone while you\u2019re walking and send it to me\u2013I\u2019ll do the rest.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n That experience led me to think about how students engage with video content that is formal and compare that to how they interact with content that is informal. Instructors can tap into what makes some of the best internet content these days\u2013authenticity and informality\u2013if they know how. Video is the easiest and most successful way to create authentic presence and build a sense of community with the students taking the course, and it only requires using one technology that most people use every day: a smart phone.<\/span><\/p>\n As an instructional designer, I want to enable and empower the faculty I work with, and that includes providing resources and support to prepare them to deliver their course as well assist with the design. I can find many articles written for educators about <\/span>how to create home recording studios for professional-looking lecture videos<\/span><\/a>, but I have yet to find an article that explicitly focuses on advising faculty how to make informal videos for course delivery purposes that goes beyond the theoretical to the practical, so I decided to write one.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m going to focus on TikTok as the model for these videos not because I think faculty should be on TikTok, but because TikTok changed the game for authentic video engagement. Like many of my generation, I\u2019m not on TikTok, and I needed my younger Gen Z friends to explain it to me. (PBS just premiered <\/span>a documentary on TikTok as explained by Gen Z<\/span><\/a>, so I am clearly not alone in this). But what I do understand, and what I think faculty can bring to their course videos, is the importance of the creator-viewer dynamic popularized by TikTok.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n What goes viral on TikTok tends to encapsulate a mood, and not require any particular technical expertise to create\u2013like the video by the guy who <\/span>recorded himself on his skateboard, sipping cranberry juice while listening to Fleetwood Mac<\/span><\/a>. That kind of realness is increasingly important in a digital age where there\u2019s a growing disconnect between \u201cbrand\u201d and \u201cauthenticity.\u201d It\u2019s why corporations like Wal-Mart have moved from brand partnerships with well-known influencers on Instagram to <\/span>creating their own \u201cinfluencer\u201d platform<\/span><\/a> where they will pay for \u201creal\u201d testimonials of their products, and NBCUniversal <\/span>just announced a initiative with TikTok stars to create television shows<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n So how can instructional designers, media producers, and instructors tap into this zeitgeist? How do you prove to your students that you\u2019re not a ghost lurking in the course shell? Good design for videos is often invisible\u2013just like good design in an online course\u2013because we experience them as a whole and they have a cumulative effect. But by looking at examples, we can identify specific elements that are associated with TikTok videos that are visually distinct from traditional videos. They also serve a different purpose, and that purpose can be supplemental to a traditional video.\u00a0<\/span>I\u2019ve separated out eight individual elements in the two video examples where the design decision has a different effect on the audience.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
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