Videos in Canvas

While we’re no longer allowed the luxury of in person, face-to-face interaction with our students, there are many other ways we can still share our voice with our students!

If you want to capture some of that face to face feeling in real time, you can always use Zoom or one of several other software options (Big Blue Button, which is native to Canvas, or Facetime or Skype or… there are many out there, they aren’t all compatible with Canvas) to hold an interactive lecture or office hour session that allows students to interact with you in real time. For more information on the wonders of Zoom, check out this page <<insert link>>.

But if synchronous lectures put part of your class at a disadvantage, what are some other ways you can give them materials that aren’t just readings? What are your options for including video?

Link to Already Created Content!

While you are an authority on your topic, you also know of several other people out there on the internet that are also authorities on the topic… but have already created videos and posted them to share! This has the advantage that many of these materials already have important accessibility features (such as closed captioning) already incorporated. Additionally, all three of them are options for embedding video directly into your course content.

YouTube

Perhaps the most ubiquitous of the options, YouTube has been around for a while and in addition to offering a lot easily accessed videos offers you the ability to create your own unlisted channel where you can save your own video creations.

TEDEd

With the rise in popularity of TED Talks, it is no wonder we often seek to use them to illustrate or emphasize the concepts we are teaching out students in class. This built in functionality allows you to search for and embed TED videos just as you would a YouTube video.

Films on Demand

For longer works, such as educational programming found on the History Channel, the BBC, and more, there is Films on Demand. Much like YouTube and TEDEd, the Films on Demand option allows you to embed the video directly in Canvas. It also offers several ways to filter your search results to allow you to find exactly the right video.

Create Your Own!

As an authority in your field, you have all the knowledge you need to teach the topic. All you need now is the knowledge to record yourself sharing that knowledge. Again, while there are many ways to accomplish this (especially using equipment designed for it) you can also do it with just your laptop, Mac, or PC – you just need a microphone and/or a camera.

Zoom

While Zoom is a great resource for online office hours and the occasional synchronous lecture, you can also use it to record yourself lecturing and save it as a video to share with your students later!

Built in Media Recorder

If you don’t really want to record a full lecture, but still want your students to see you and hear you for a few minutes there is a media recording option built into Canvas. Be mindful of the fact that this video will get stored as one of your Canvas Files; you may not want to make too many of them and you probably shouldn’t make the more than a few minutes in length.

Quicktime

Native to Macs, Quicktime has features that allow you to audio and video record yourself. Then you can link to that video in your course (either by storing it on OneDrive or by uploading it to YouTube).

Powerpoint

If you’ve got a microphone but no camera, you can still make a recording of yourself teaching. Powerpoint in the Office 365 suite features the ability for you to record yourself talking as you work through a set of Powerpoint slides!

Video Storage

Wait! So where are all these videos going to be stored? While you could upload them as Canvas files, you could run into a space issue – we only have so much space designated for our Canvas courses.

You could upload your videos to YouTube. If you are the only person in the videos [i.e. there are no students interacting either visually or audibly] go ahead and make a private YouTube channel for yourself. You can then embed those videos in your Canvas page as we discussed earlier.

You could store them in your OneDrive and link to them in your Canvas course. For          more information on OneDrive and how it works with Canvas see <<insert link here>>