We invited California community college educators to experiment with video-based GenAI tools and ponder their potential role and impact on diverse students in open access institutions. Those who participated (without compensation) agreed to meet six times for 90 minutes and critically examine their risks and opportunities, particular in relation to online teaching and learning. The group was comprised of online education faculty and staff who had a mix of skeptical curiosity and suspicious reluctance about synthetic media’s role in teaching and learning.

Creating Our Space

As we began our three month journey together, the group co-created a community agreement to clarify their collective needs to create an environment that would be supportive and promote the psychological safety needed to try new things and share questions, concerns, and successes. I learn a lot from these community agreements. Patterns emerged that reaffirmed the simple and very important idea that college educators are just like students — because we are all humans. One of my favorite contributions to this particular agreement was, “Embrace experimentation without any pressure to participate.” As the facilitator (and community member/learner), I took that to heart by warmly encouraging experimentation and creating spaces to share work and/or share experiences without expectations or judgments. Just support all participants to work through their concerns and hesitations — or engage and learn without creating content if they don’t “get there.”

We began our first session by defining what it means to take an “identity conscious” (Costino, 2018) approach to our work. To center the notions of intersectionality and power/privilege from step one, we all engaged in a reflective activity about our social identities and examined the Wheel of Power and Privilege before moving into breakout rooms for small group discussions. Having these personal conversations set a tone for all of our conversations and began to set the tone for explring AI technologies through the lens of different human experiences, as opposed positioning AI generated video as a neutral tool to simply plop into our toolkit.

Engaging as Learners and then Creators

Early on, we all completed the (brief and free) course by Leon Furze, This Course is AI Generated, which uses AI generated content including a “digital double” of Furze in the instructional videos. I asked our community members step into the role of learner in the course and be critically aware of how they felt as they watched and listened to the videos. In our next session, we went into small breakout rooms and shared our experiences about the course and then came together to debrief as a whole group. It was quite fascinating to hear the varied responses — from “I felt creeped out the whole time” to “the avatar didn’t phase me at all” to “I got used to it pretty quickly and would expect our students to do the same.” Hearing from the diverse perspectives was important because people often have a tendency to assume their experience represents the experiences for everyone. And that is never the case.

From there, some of us began creating and sharing our own digital doubles, creating them with a free HeyGen account. Each time we met, more an more people began to experiment, but they were never required to create an account if they did not feel comfortable doing so. We discussed the tool’s privacy policies and learned how to opt out of contributing to its training.

Power Norms at Play

By using the tools with a critical eye and making space to share experiences, it didn’t take long for some of the biases within the algorithms to surface. I was reminded of Maha Bali’s thoughts about the need to engage critically with AI to teach students to see the forces of dominant culture at play, while also teaching them to critique them at the same time. And, of course, educators need to develop this critical AI literacy first, in order to apply the skills to their practice.

During one of our sessions, we discussed the uncanny valley in relation to how it felt to watch a digital double of yourself deliver words you never spoke. It’s hard to translate this feeling into words. Some of us laughed, others cringed. I think everyone agreed that the experience was plain creepy. But there were also some powerful and critical takeways, as well. One of our members, Jane Lê Skaife, who teaches Ethnic Studies at Sierra College, began by describing her experience as, “It’s like me, but not like me” and then continued to unpack this experience further. Like most participants, Jane had her family and a friend or two watch her digital double video and closely observed their reactions. In our group discussion, Jane shared that several people responded by saying, “It sounds like you, but white.” Jane asked us, “What does that even mean?”

Intrigued by this question, Jane chose to (temporarily) upgrade to a premium account to gain access to a few more features, including the ability to apply different accents to her digital double videos. One of those accents was “American.” When she translated her authentic voice into what HeyGen describes as an “American accent,” she observed that she sounded different. Here is Jane’s written reflection about how this experience resonated with her (shared with permission):

”This ultimately sent a very powerful message to me that I did not fit the idea/ideal perception of what an American was supposed to sound like. This was quite disconcerting for me considering that I was born here, and I do consider myself very much American by ‘jus soli’; that is, American by ‘right by the soil’ or ‘American by birthplace.’ For me, this experience reinforced the dominant narrative in the U.S. that American equals white, which is problematic and emphasizes the need to put more diverse people in the development and design of synthetic media tools and AI tools in general.”

Jane’s observation, as well as her courage for surfacing this important conversation in our predominantly white space, engaged other members in a reflective conversation about how it felt to have their accents altered by the tools. One person noted, “It was like part of myself was being erased.” Those of us, like me, who did not notice a change in their accent, recognized our privilege.

Practical Application of Synthetic Media

Below is a video that I contributed to the CoP as a possible use case for synthetic media in instruction. I call it a synthetic media mash-up. The video provides a summary of an openly shared research article, Is Deepfake Diversity Real? (Kaate et al., 2025), that examined the diversity of AI avatars in synthetic media tools. While the content of the article is compelling and important, the video represents a peek at one way to use brief AI-generated videos of research studies or other written content that is openly shared to avoid copyright violation. The video took me about 20 minutes to create.

Videos like this aren’t inspirational or transformative. Leon Furze has insightfully inquired about whether they’re anything more than “digital plastic.” Furze writes, “As the layer of digital plastic builds up in the digital ecosystem, it becomes more compressed and more homogenous, eventually flattening out to a sickly looking smear of uniform data. The rise of GAI content spells the end of the richer, human epoch of online data.” But could they provide different ways for students to access content and create more streamlined workflows for faculty?

As teachers considering how/if to use GenAI, we must recognize the critical role that our authentic presence plays in creating spaces where students want to lean in an learn. Spaces in all modalities where students feel seen, where students feel supported and where students feel challenged. Those are feelings that make us human and they’re feelings each of us crave. Without experiencing these feelings of connection, we wither. Humans need interactions with other humans to thrive. Synthetic media can relay information, but it won’t inspire or motivate.

About the video above:

• The script was generated by Claude Sonnet 3.5 (Prompts: 1) Summarize the research questions, findings, and discussion from this article about diversity in deep fakes. What should college instructors using synthetic media to support the learning needs of diverse students take away from this study? 2) Write an engaging script for a 2-minute video overview of this study summarizing research questions, the number of avatars included in the sample, its main findings and takeaways.).
• The slides were generated using Gamma using the script, reviewed for accuracy, and downloaded.
• The slides were loaded into HeyGen with the script. An AI avatar of me was used for the opening video, then my voice clone was used for the narrative over the slides.
• The closing video is my authentic self, recorded by me in my backyard.

Risks and Guidance

As our CoP came to a close, I asked our community members to reflect on what they learned and to identify some risks and guidance for colleagues to consider. Here are our contributions to this conversation. Please take these as recommendations for getting started.

What risk(s) of synthetic media are at the forefront of your mind?

• Losing connection and trust with students by using synthetic media as a replacement for our authentic selves online
• Proliferating identity stereotypes by leaving out neurodiverse people, those who are older, those who are disabled, and intersectional identities and reinforcing language norms
• Teaching Evaluation Conflicts – This is a real story: a colleague who teaches online is using a digital double as videos for lectures and is getting pushback in their evaluation (“It is not acceptable; this is not a human.”) Who decides?
• Disengagement may increase for some students
• Future generations – What concerns surface if young people are raised in an environment that uses digital avatars all the time
• Environmental risks – Synthetic media uses large amounts of water and energy (although how much is unclear). Leon Furze’s theory of “digital plastic” resonates
• Copyright – who owns the copyright of these videos?

What guidance would you give to community college educators about using synthetic media?

• Be intentional and transparent if you use synthetic media in your teaching
• Think about this: “What is the intent of this video? Is it to deliver content or to develop trust with students?” And use those answers to guide your use
• Guide your use of SM with a critical focus on using it to improve the experiences of diverse students
• Use it in addition to your human presence
• Maybe the better use is for students to use synthetic media to adapt content to meet their individualized needs
• There may moments/opportunities where a “shallowfake” might be better than “deepfake” (e.g., an obvious cartoon seems more authentic than a hyper realistic version of ourselves)
• Use in small doses–don’t rush to convert to full synthetic video right away

What would you add to these lists?

Participants who chose to create accounts in this CoP started with a free HeyGen account and a few also experimented with a free Synthesia account.

In June 2025, Saša Stojić-Ito and I presented a session at the Online Teaching Conference in Long Beach, CA about our CoP. Below is a link to our resource site, which includes our slides and more video examples and resources.

Session Resource Site

Many thanks to my colleagues who participated in this CoP and for their willingness to share their experiences more broadly.

The post Daring to Dabble: Engaging in a Synthetic Media CoP to Advance Critical AI Literacy appeared first on MICHELLE PACANSKY-BROCK.

As social creatures, we scan our environment for “kindness cues” of social inclusion to determine whether we are safe (both physically and psychologically). This same scanning occurs in online classes and all too often the non-verbal and verbal cues our brain is wired to seek out (a smile, a warm vocal intonation) are missing, resulting in ambiguity. That ambiguity keeps our brains on high alert, using the same cognitive bandwidth we use for learning.

Welcoming and imperfect human presence mitigates psychological threat and belongingness uncertainty, phenomena that prevent students, particularly those with minoritized identities, from achieving their full potential. Yes, there’s much more to effective, equitable online teaching but research conducted on community college students, the most diverse population in higher ed, has shown that having such a connection with an online instructor is the exception rather than the norm. And the research I conducted with our project team, led by Di Xu at UC Irvine, validated the positive influence of humanized online teaching on student belonging and a reduction in racial equity gaps in online undergraduate STEM courses at community colleges and access-oriented universities.

I’ve been curious about the development of synthetic media and how it might play a role in online teaching. Synthetic media is content (image, video, or text) that is generated by AI. The term is often negatively associated with deepfakes. And this tech is making its way into the online teaching landscape.

This spring, I am facilitating a community of practice comprised of a dozen faculty and staff from community colleges across California to kick the tires on synthetic media tools and explore how or if they may have a place in one’s teaching toolkit. Here is the video I generated using my own digital double (created with HeyGen) as a promotion for the community of practice. After creating my “digital double” ( or “custom avatar” as it’s called in HeyGen) with a 3-minute training video of me speaking in my backyard wearing a denim jacket and orange shirt, I typed a transcript into HeyGen and this is the video that it produced.

As you watch it, what do you notice? How do you feel? How would it resonate with different students?

Our CoP cohort has had some very compelling conversations about synthetic media, delving into other features and capabilities, as well. Like the ability to translate videos into different language with impressive lip synching. And uploading a doc/PDF and having it generate an avatar providing an AI generated summary. As we all move forward into the AI era, it’s vital that we lean in and have conversations about things — even the things that creep us out. Because how we use technology changes us. Pull up a chair folks. You are needed at this table.

Curious to hear about what we’ve been learning (and feeling)? View the archive of a webinar I hosted with members of our CoP.

The post Digital Doubles and Authentic Presence appeared first on MICHELLE PACANSKY-BROCK.

In recent decades, connective labor jobs have been bombarded by efforts to ensure efficiency and, as a result, have involved standardization. Check lists, manuals, and rubrics are examples that have influenced a valuing of standardization over connective labor. And, as a result of these systemic influences, connective labor has been rendered invisible and is not valued.

Connective labor feeds the souls of students, as well as teachers. It’s the “spark” that faculty often refer to that they love so much about teaching. It’s what makes students remember educators decades later. And, while this next idea may raise a skeptical eyebrow, connective labor can occur at a distance through the use of technology — asynchronously. For those who teach online and center their imperfections, share their struggles, critically consider their word choice, and intentionally get to know their students as humans, you know how humanizing your teaching results in meaningful relationships with students (and often with more students than a face-to-face classroom). If you don’t agree with me, ask yourself if you’ve had the opportunity to experience an online class (as a learner) that was taught by an actively engaged, empathetic instructor who got to know you, checked in with you, validated your efforts, and challenged you to achieve high expectations while being flexible. If your answer is, “I haven’t,” ask yourself why. And if you are thinking, “No faculty member has time for that,” ask yourself why again.

Connective labor is essential to teaching and is more important to the academic success of students from marginalized communities and for students who learn online. Yet, these same students may be poised to receive their connective labor from bots instead of humans. Pugh points out recent shifts towards boutiquey medical services with high touch care that come with a premium price tag and “harried” primary care doctors whose care is harder to access in person and limited to a number of minutes. Money also buys access to smaller class sizes taught by more resourced faculty. As noted by Jessica Grose, human interaction is now a luxury good and Pugh predicts that we may be headed for a time when those with the financial resources will receive their connective labor from humans and those without will receive connective labor from bots.

As an educator who has served open access and access-oriented institutions of higher education for more than twenty years, I am

concerned about this prediction. Regardless of what your role is in education, be mindful about what AI is used for and what it is not used for. Guide those decisions while keeping human connection at the center — in all course modalities. Community colleges in particular, institutions that serve the largest number of the most vulnerable students, must navigate AI while preserving human-human interaction and capsizing the systemic undervaluing of relationships.

I have a memory of my 8th grade social studies teacher, Mrs. Bennett, that I want to leave you with. I had just turned in an assignment that had me write a story about a personal experience. I think it was the first time I had a teacher who gave me an assignment to write about my life. I loved it. I remember her handing me my stapled binder paper and seeing her handwritten note following my name at the top of the paper that read, “…is a talented writer.” Those four words changed me. As I reflect on my life, I recognize that I had more confidence in my writing than other academic skill as I entered high school and went on to college. And writing has played a big part in my career progression. Now, I know I’m not an English teacher and I don’t have answers to most of the challenges we face today, but I can assure you that a human will not be intrinsically motivated by feedback from a machine. I also know I have a lot of privilege and the power this interaction had on me makes me recognize how even more powerful human interaction is to humans who are used to being left out, scrutinized, and stereotyped because of their identity.

The post Will human connection become a luxury item? appeared first on MICHELLE PACANSKY-BROCK.