Enhancing Educators' Social Presence in MOOCs: Design of Daily Video Blog

This paper discusses the design of a video blog to enhance the social presence of educators in MOOCs. Social presence is considered to be one of the critical factors in education, and MOOCs are no exception. However, in the most existing MOOCs, educators' social presence is limited due to its predefined, linear course structure, as well as text-based semi-synchronous conversation. Hence, this research proposes a daily video blog, which focuses on presenting: 1) Educators Biography; educators' background and experience in the subject area, 2) Educators Feedback; educators' response to learners' questions raised in the course, and 3) Educators Discussion; educators' debate on the latest trends surrounding the course topicto further augment educators' social presences. This paper studies the computer science course of FutureLearn which was conducted in October 2018 and April 2019. A series of short videos were uploaded per day on YouTube and shared with learners alongside the four weeks course. Through observing educators and learners' behavior, as well as conducting interviews with learners, the findings suggest a positive impact of a video blog on enhancing educators' social presence and further opens up new possibilities and new ways in designing MOOCs.