[MUSIC, Title:"Creating a Social Partnership"] [Barb] I still remember walking across a crowded, stadium-sized hallway at the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris and being stopped by a stranger who had taken Terry's and mine massive open online course "Learning How to Learn." "Are you Barbara Oakley," he asked, "from 'Learning How to Learn'?" When I said, "Yes," he began conversing with me as if we were old friends. And when an elevator door opened before me in Bogotá, Colombia, a woman I'd never seen before stopped dead in the hallway, staring at me wide-eyed, "You're Barbara Oakley! From 'Learning How to Learn'!" Suddenly, I found myself having dinner with a family of Colombians as if I'd known them all my life. Similar meetings with strangers who have instantly added me to their circle of trusted friends have happened in Japan, South Africa, elsewhere around the world, and of course, all over the United States. Naturally, it's not all the time— although our course "Learning How to Learn" has had millions of students, I'm no movie star. It is uncanny, though, how when I do happen to meet people who have only seen me on video, these experiences seem to have left them with a strong mutual sense of connection and trust. Part of this almost certainly relates to a phenomenon known as the "mere-exposure effect," also known as the "familiarity principle." It turns out that when we simply grow more familiar with something or someone, we tend to develop a warmer affinity. I myself have noticed that when I teach flipped classes, using videos I've made that don't show my face—as opposed to videos that DO show my face— that extra "face-time" makes a difference in how engaged students become with the materials of the course. As researcher Michelle Wong and her colleagues note in their paper "Up Close and Personal: Examining Effects of Instructor Video Presence on Student's Sense of Connection": "Obviously, students watching a pre-recorded video are not actually part of a synchronous conversation nor capable of making true eye contact with the recorded instructor. Nevertheless, seeing an instructor looking, smiling, and speaking 'as if' a conversational partner was there may create the illusion of social partnership." My lived experience vouches for Dr. Wong's findings! Wong goes on to note that there seems to be something about eye-level lecture videos, where you can clearly see facial expressions along with gestures, that seems to increase students' understanding of the material. Indeed, we saw exactly that earlier in the course, about the importance of gesture. But what about facial expressions? [MUSIC, Interlude: "Mirroring and Motivation"] [Terry] In Week 2 of our course, we described what neuroscience- at-the-movies expert Jeff Zacks has dubbed "the mirror rule." This is when the whole brain becomes involved in subtly mimicking what we see others doing. It's almost like a dance team on one side of the stage that watches and mimics the motions of the dancers on the other side. As we saw with gestures, this mirrored neural activation can help us access our neural schemas for understanding the world. For our purposes, a particularly important aspect of the mirror rule is when we mimic facial expressions. Facial expressions seem to be particularly good at tapping into the network of neurons involving our emotions. Perhaps the best way to understand this is to put a pen in your mouth. Putting a pen in your mouth automatically makes your mouth move into a smiling position. But did you know that having your mouth moved into a smile can make you feel happy, like you are really smiling, even if you don't feel happy before you put the pen in your mouth? Another related curiosity involves Botox®, a paralyzing drug used in tiny amounts to smooth away the wrinkles that arise when you frown. Surprisingly, Botox® improves mood—in part, because the tiny bit of paralysis restricts the ability to frown. Being unable to put your face in a frown makes it more difficult to access the negative emotions that accompany a frown. There's controversy surrounding how much your muscles and sensation shape your emotions, but there is little question from research involving movies, that we experience emotions as a result of watching others on the screen, either because we're imitating the person onscreen or because we are simulating them. The result is a kind of emotional contagion in which the audience is infected by the emoting actors. Movies can manipulate us because they hijack evolved mechanisms for responding to events in the real world. What's particularly important, Zacks goes on to say, is that exaggerated stimuli, such as especially expressive faces we see in movie actors, can be particularly good at causing people to mirror what they see. As he observes, "Across a number of species and behaviors, exaggerated stimuli can be more effective at inducing a behavior than faithful reproductions of the normal stimulus." [Barb] This means that we teachers, using our facial expressions, can manifest emotions that can infect our students with our enthusiasm and delight from the material. In other words, through that mirroring effect, we can begin to motivate even initially unmotivated students. This, in fact, is why it can be so important for us to show our enthusiastic, upbeat, and yes, a little over-the-top-enthusiastic faces to students. Sometimes I think the camera subtracts 10 of your natural charisma points, perhaps simply due to the small screen and the fact that the limited frame naturally cuts off much of your body language. The bottom line is that online teaching is NOT like normal everyday life. It benefits from bigger-than-life expressiveness and contagious enthusiasm. Remind yourself to be upbeat, enthusiastic, and expressive whenever you're teaching on camera, even if that's not the way you usually are in your regular day-to-day interactions, and even if you're having an off day. With time, you'll find your personality will begin to naturally sparkle whenever you get in front of the camera. On a side note, this can be like a form of contagiously upbeat therapy, even for YOU, on those initially "off" days. You go on camera and fall into your usual habit of sparkling enthusiasm, putting your face into positions of passionate excitement. When you finish, you can find yourself feeling surprisingly happier. [David] One blessing of online teaching is that being exceptionally enthusiastic does NOT mean you have to bellow at the top of your voice. Your microphone handles matters. And quite honestly, this might be my favorite part of teaching online... My voice starts to give out after five minutes of talking at full volume. But online, I can whisper and you can still hear me. Look at how I'm teaching right now. I'm SUPER excited, but my voice is NOT loud. In fact, being passionate about your subject doesn't need to have anything to do with your volume. You don't want to run your voice ragged from overuse. Facial expressions are also closely related to voice intonations. Your facial expression may seem like a trivial motivator, but consider the teachers who have had the biggest impact on your life and career. I'll bet they were often people whose expressive enthusiasm has helped shape you and remains alive in you. Through the great lens that online learning has brought to countless students, you can pass on your enthusiasm and your passion to, in turn, shape the lives of your students now and for years to come. [Barb] I'm Barb Oakley. [David] I'm David Joyner. [Terry] I'm Terry Sejnowski. [All] Learn it, link it, let's do it!