In Week 1 of Dr. Rob Power's course Dr. Rob Power's course, Teaching and Learning in an Online World (EDUC5199G), I created a personalized Instructor Introduction video that I can use to greet students "at the door” (Power 2020) of my Online Teaching Module. The video was was embedded both in my personal education Google Site (Google, n.d.), Linkedin site (Microsoft, n.d.) and within the two Google Classrooms (Google, n.d.) that I am currently using to teach my three online courses. I also included the Welcome Video in my Online Teaching Unit for EDUC5199G. In this blog post, I will be reflecting on the purpose and creation of the Instructor Welcome Video.

It is important to build community in an online course. Students may become disengaged if they feel isolated or if they don’t get to interact with their teacher and peers. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) needs to be used effectively to create a community in an online course and overcome social barriers to student engagement. Student engagement is the level of interest students show towards the topic being taught; their interaction with the content, instructor, and peers; and their motivation to learn and progress through the course.

An Teacher Introduction video helped me to begin to establish Teacher Presence. The students' understanding of both my work experience and educational qualifications helped build my credibility It is important for students to get to know me as a person at the start of the course. . By discussing my interests and hobbies in the video, I was better able to connect with my students, many who also share a passion for food and travel. This process of sharing between myself and the students helped increase Social Presence. I used Adobe Spark to create the video where I recorded my voice and various images. Words were kept at a minimum to reduce cognitive overload and the video was kept under three minutes to keep students engaged.