Authenticity

Back to making videos:  because this is being adapted from a face to face course, I have a lot of PowerPoints that I use in class as the base for discussions and lessons.  This past week I looked at what I have left to convert to videos to see if there were any that could be conveyed with just text and appropriate images as necessary and I began to lay out some of the pages.  What I feel that they are missing is authenticity.  I like to conduct class in such a manner that we are having a discussion in class rather than just listening to me talk about a specific topic.  What I have discovered about myself and online learning is at times I feel it has lost its authenticity because more often than not it feels like checking off boxes or meeting a metric rather than real and engaging.  I know that this is difficult to achieve when a course is completely asynchronous and there is no correct answer on how to make it feel more engaging.  I guess by creating the videos the students will hear my voice, I don’t think I will ever put my face on the video, and not just feel like they are doing it on their own but know that there is a real person on the other side of the computer.  I appreciate all your comments and the weekly updates, because it does make it feel more real and authentic when we are all spread out across the country.   This brings me back to making videos, the same thing I have been talking about for the past month and will be doing until the end.