{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Why Distance Learning?","title":"#82 All Learning Is Social: Jered Borup on Social Presence in K-12 Online Learning (Part 2)","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":1918,"description":"In this episode of Why Distance Learning, your hosts continue their conversation with Jered Borup — professor at George Mason University and one of the most-cited researchers in K-12 online learning — about what AI in education is actually doing to relationships, what social presence requires when \"build a video lecture\" can be done by a chatbot, and why teacher burnout is the real bottleneck the field doesn't want to talk about. Borup connects his earliest 2012 work on asynchronous video to his 2025 Open Praxis research on combining AI-generated text with human-created video, and argues that AI used to offload feedback erodes the very thing online learners need: the felt sense that the teacher is real and knows them.\nTogether, the hosts and Jered explore the conflation of social media, video games, and ed tech in the parental imagination after the pandemic; how to use AI without replacing the relational core of teaching; why one-on-one asynchronous video may build social presence more reliably than synchronous Zoom classes; the DLAC Phase 2 research agenda Borup co-authored with Michael Barbour and Kristen DeBruler; the mental-health gap between teachers and other professionals with comparable education; and Borup's one-line answer to the show's title question — that personalization and Universal Design for Learning are easier to do online than off.\nThis is Part 2 of a two-part conversation. Listen to Part 1 for the foundational ACE framework, the on-site mentor model, and the parent question.\n\nKey Topics\n\"Emergency remote learning\" vs. real online learning — what parents are still confusing\nSocial presence — old research, new tools (asynchronous video, AI-plus-human-video)\nThe risk of offloading teacher feedback to AI\nAsynchronous one-on-one video as a relationship lever (vs. one-to-many Zoom)\nDLAC Research Agenda Phase 2 — what's keeping researchers up at night\nTeacher mental health and the AI strain on top of pandemic strain\nAuthentic assessment and \"we're...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/2eKPm8ob1eS5Ju0DBuhPXRKuQv7Vx4cWT0c4uWSYbCQ/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS82MmFh/MmQyYTc4NzdkNGJh/MzIzZWU5MmI3MzRk/MjQwYy5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}