Online Educator Entrepreneurship With Facilitator-Created, Subject-Specific Targeted Videos

Seckman (2018) relates that online media could create technical challenges for faculty with changes from traditional classroom settings and frustrations with technological challenges. Harrison (2015) highlights the emergent need to address online video construction. Dong and Poh (2015) suggest that if educators produce their videos that they should attain a “working knowledge of video production and techniques” (p. 141). Harrison posits, “Online videos should be carefully planned to create high quality, concise videos of less than 10 minutes in length, yet contain enough content to reduce the overall number of required videos” (p. 168). The application of the rule of thirds, for example, where the object of interest appears in the intersection of thirds of the screen is successful with hand-held mobile device video production (Cassidy, 2016; Marcus, 2018). Moving and stationary colorful blackboard backgrounds, well-prepared facilitator text, and choreographed movements to create succinct, bite-size videos that cover just one to two main concepts of the class lecture engage the adult online learner (Hew, 2016; Marcus, 2018).

Dong and Poh (2015) reiterate the digital advantages of online videos with the autonomy they give the student viewer to fast-forward or replay certain sections for clarification. Hew (2016) recommends that videos be subtitled to assist with clarity of information and posits that problemcentric learning with simple to understand expositions promotes online adult student engagement. Prerecorded videos promote autonomy and immediacy that adult learners respond to (Marcus, 2018; McLean & Suchman, 2016). Murray, Perez, Geist, and Hedrick (2013) further expounded on concepts of online autonomy for students and how this learning is basically student controlled and assists with materials that are significant, exact, and in a consummate tight content presentation format. Johnson, Trabelsi, and Fabbro (2011) suggest establishing digital resource academic libraries and that this is part of the new global lens for educational dissemination. Marcus (2018) further states that collegiate video libraries should be created by the facilitators of the college rather than an outsourcing online video resource.

Short, Williams, and Christie’s (1976) theory on social presence posits that it is contingent on the communication medium and factors such as (a) aesthetic appeal, (b) immediacy, (c) the need to convey genuineness, and (d) intimacy. They also explained the dynamics of visual to verbal signals from the trunks, arms, posturing, standing, sitting, and slouching, as significant influences of social presence. Facilitator length and direction of gaze, eye movements, head nods, and pauses between delivery of information have also been shown to be significant engagement skills (Argyle, 1969; Marcus, 2018).

Online video educational lecturers can benefit by theatrical skills of performance including: speakers’ movements, gestures, immediacy of information, and recognition of the viewing audience (Cook & Schofield, 2017; Marcus, 2018). Richardson, Swan, Lowenthal, and Ice (2016) shared results from their meta-analysis on social presence and explained it as the “Dynamic interplay of instructors, students, instructional designers, instructional strategies, technology, media, and norms coming together to determine the learning outcomes” (p. 480). Kizilcec, Bailenson, and Gomez (2015) explained the need for teachers’ faces in the online forums because historically face-to-face communication has been the principal means of knowledge transfer between humans. Cook and Schofield (2017) explained there is a need for online students to see the teachers-as-people and explained how this will imprint adult learner memory.

Cook and Schofield (2017) promoted that online students need to perceive and identify teachers as people and online personalities. This includes the skills of a video presenter with speaker articulation and kinesthetic movements in the delivery of information. Marcus’s (2018) study showed success with facilitator clapping of hands to emphasize points and repeated catch phrases such as, “That’s it in a nutshell.” Online facilitators will benefit, therefore, with training in (a) speech resonance, (b) pace, and (c) articulation. They need practice in how to include the kinesthetic presence of hand gestures and body positioning and movements during the subject-specific videos (Marcus, 2018). Sopczyk, Doyle, and Jacobs (2011) explained that losses in electronic communication (text based) of facial expression and even body posturing could miss the educational message’s intent.

Cook and Schofield (2017) report on their study of online video lectures as well as the need for personal identity of the lecturer and illustrated that, “Teachers as people loom large in our adult memories” (p. 58). Future online video educators should practice voice articulation, projection, camera eye contact, virtual audience recognition along with salutations at the beginning and end of the videos to formulate the facilitator persona, genuineness, likability, and transparency to build adult online student trust and relationships (Marcus, 2018).

Duffy and Pooley (2017) explained the need to for educators to promote or perish. They suggest that organization social networks such as Academia.edu are present and future pathways of dissemination that support concepts of self-branding. According to Duffy and Pooley (2017) academic entrepreneurship maybe a necessity in today’s competitive professor job markets. They point out that secondary to budget cuts and the vacillating economy of today, a phenomenon of a majority of adjunct/ part-time or nontenure track faculty are now being employed. They further state that the secure nature of professor employment is no longer and that the competitive job markets are a challenge for todays’ educators.

J. Miller’s (2017)New York Times article explains the power of self-promotion and that it is no longer exclusively for reality stars such as the Kardashians. She reports hundreds of thousands are watching “regular people” through social networks and the astounding reach of self-promoters who apply Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and YouTube. J. Miller (2017) suggests that these social media venues create an enticing social vulnerability and tangibility that build trust and strong relationships and a communitylike following. Marcus’s (2018) study on facilitator-created, subject-specific videos suggests that academicians either through their institutions’ media accounts or with vanity entrepreneurship can find their voices and personas to create their unique educational self-brand to engage and capture the adult online student.

All dissemination has changed secondary to technology. Brienza (2016) explains degrees of self-exploitation and free-market capitalism pertaining to neoliberal universities. He espouses that new degrees such as masters (MA) in self-publishing and the breakout commercial success of self-published novels such as E. L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey series are successful with appeal to a specific market. Cummins (2015) remarks on the success of this novel selling over 100 million copies mostly to a target market segment, in this case, surprisingly, women.

The phenomena of cosmetic mogul Kylie Jenner’s 100% self-owned and promoted make-up/lip plumper products also show the success of a specific product with a young consumer market. Ms. Jenner’s success was catapulted by her previous reality television identification, and constant social media vehicles such as Twitter and Snapchat. Her appeal was with a specific product to a specific market and, according to Forbes magazine, she will most likely be the youngest self-made billionaire of all time (Robehmed, 2018). Understanding, therefore, the culture of the market of individuals you wish to reach, and the ability to reach them to forge relationships exponentially catapults technologically driven disseminations.

Allison and Rehm (2016) explained that online educators need to enhance their practice from the delivery of information to the reproduction of the essence of a real face-to-face traditional classroom student experience. Giannakos, Chorianopoulos, Ronchetti, Szegedi, and Teasley (2014) posit there is no present consolidated resource for video educational learning. Gormley (2013) concludes that particular with online nursing education programs accommodations need to be made secondary to expanding shifts to computer-based technologies in nursing education, for example, from previous conventional presentations of programs, assignments, and course subjects. Marcus (2018) informs on pragmatic and emotional survey data that support success for adult nursing education students in accelerated programs. These students felt the teacher’s social presence and grasping of advanced subject material with incorporation of facilitator-created, subject-specific videos.

McLuhan, Fiore, and Agel (1967) explicated, “All media are extensions of some human faculty psychic or physical” (p. 26). Ivory Tower distance educators will be replaced by familiar educator social media personalities. Online educator entrepreneurship with facilitator-created, subjectspecific, targeted videos are part of the future pathway for academia.