As widely used communications media, videos and podcasts should be at the heart of any online class. The problem is that it is nearly impossible to make mistake-free videos and podcasts—at least if you speak off the cuff, as people who make a lot of them generally do. We invariably stumble over our words, pause to gather our thoughts, and inject filler words like “um” when under the pressure of recording, and most faculty lack the digital editing skills needed to clean up their work. (Instructional designers, meanwhile, are often too busy populating the learning management system to do it for them). As a result, faculty tend to either default to text documents or produce substandard work.
