Although digital pedagogy in higher education has been pervasive the last two decades, the COVID-19 pandemic catapulted all educators into this arena. And although many educators had previous experience building digital course content, a large number of educators on our campus struggled daily to keep their "digitally native" Generation Z students virtually engaged in both asynchronous and synchronous modalities. Experimenting with the Voice Thread© platform, we discovered that this digital tool helped us to create learning environments that significantly heightened student engagement, not only with course material, but within the learning environment as well. Our theoretical premise for this outcome is the idea that VT is a tool that has the ability to create the aura of an authentic, real-time, social presence. As supported by the literature and incorporated into our proposed model, social presence is key for spurning involvement and subsequently increasing engagement. Our literature review also supported the notion that the multi-media capacity of VT gave students the ability to interact with course material, their peers and the instructor in meaningful ways. It also gave students the freedom to practice self-expression, creative content development and public speaking/writing skills. From our professional vantage point, Voice Thread can be used for creating an authentic social presence in both synchronous and asynchronous learning environments. A significant managerial implication of VT use is increased student satisfaction. Extrapolating this beyond a single course, we see higher-arching ramifications including increased student persistence and ultimately retention, important metrics in higher education.