Kaltura’s Video Package for Canvas enables anyone with a Canvas course/page to view, record, upload, publish, search, and share video directly from the Canvas environment. There is also a new feature called Kaltura Video Assignment that allows faculty to require students to upload video as an assignment rather than the traditional document upload that is used most of the time.

Basic Features & Tools

• Easy Video Uploading – Upload video using a simple interface into a particular course, at the Moodle main page level (if unsure which course the media will ultimately reside in), or into the Shared Repository to give all faculty access to your video.
• Create webcam videos – Welcome messages, introductions, assignment instructions, simple demonstrations, and other webcam media
• Screen recording – easily record the screen, along with audio and webcam feeds, to create and publish screencasts within Moodle. Instructors and students can record and share lectures, presentations (think PowerPoint), software tutorials, just to name a few ideas.
• Record using multiple cameras – Kaltura provides a software tool called Kaltura Capture. This is a lecture capture tool that allows anyone to create videos and lecture capture files. In addition, Kaltura Capture gives users the option to connect to multiple cameras to record different shots in one video for playback in a custom player.
• All videos are machine captioned at 80% accuracy. ADA compliant captioning is available.

The following resources can help you get started.

• Record and Embed a Kaltura Capture Video
• Tips for Recording Kaltura Videos
• Create a Kaltura Quiz
• Create a Kaltura Video Assignment
• Kaltura.com Knowledge Base

For more training and individual help on creating narrated lectures and videos, contact a member of the Instructional Design Team.

You can use any screen recording tools which may be found online or come installed on your computer. You can even record lectures right on your tablet or mobile device. Albright has has a accounts with a tool called Screencastomatic. These accounts are loaned to faculty on an as-needed basis. If you would like a copy of this software on your computer (Mac or PC), contact Client Services.

The following resources can help you get started.

• Download Screencast-O-Matic
• Screencast-O-Matic Overview
• Create a Screencast-O-Matic Video
• Edit Screencast-O-Matic Videos
• Screencast-O-Matic Tutorials

After you create your video, upload to Kaltura for your course!

For more training and individual help on creating narrated lectures and videos, contact a member of the Instructional Design Team.

Many users have all the equipment they need for creating lectures. Most laptops have a built-in camera and microphone. iPhones, iPads, and tablets also come with these built in tools. But sometimes other equipment is needed to produce a higher quality video to meet instructional needs.

Digital Learning and Innovation has built a lending library just for faculty. This library contains equipment that faculty can borrow to assist in creating lectures or help in meeting other instructional needs.

Lending Library for Faculty

The library is small but growing. Don’t see something you need? Just email a suggestion and we will do our best to help with your project.

Digital Learning and Innovation still has a media library where anyone can still reserve and borrow laptops, cameras, etc. This faculty lending library items are loaned only to faculty for instructional design purposes.

For more training and individual help on creating narrated lectures and videos, contact a member of the Instructional Design Team.

If you want to use your iPad or tablet to create screencasts that resemble Khan Academy style videos consider using the Explain Everything app. It is available on iTunes and Google Play for under $10. Explain Everything is an easy-to-use design, screencasting, and interactive whiteboard tool that lets you annotate, animate, narrate, import, and export almost anything to and from almost anywhere.

Professor Janice Rodriguez has used Explain Everything to flip her Spanish courses. Her goal was to increase the amount of time learners spend in class engaging with content.

Making Flipped Classroom Videos with Explain Everything

For more training and individual help on creating narrated lectures and videos, contact a member of the Instructional Design Team.

Why should you caption videos that you create? If you use videos in your classes, adding captions is consistent with best practice to meet ADA Guidelines (see below) as well as creating a universal-designed classroom (UDL) experience for your students that engages their diverse learning styles.

If a student has a specific disability accommodation, you may be required to provide captions or a transcript to meet a specific accommodation in your course. Consult with the office of Student Accessibility & Advocacy if you have further questions.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) spells out requirements for accessibility and Section 508 (http://www.section508.gov/section508-laws) is an amendment to the Rehabilitation Act that requires federal agencies and programs that receive federal funding (including colleges and universities) to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities.

If you do caption your videos, the following are best practices for creating ADA compliant captions:

• One to three lines of text appear on-screen all at once, stay there for three to seven seconds, and are then replaced by another caption.
• Timed to synchronize with the audio.
• Do not cover up graphics and other essential visual elements of the picture.
• Require the use of upper and lowercase letters.
• Use a font similar to Helvetica medium.
• Have good resolution.
• Include not more than 32-characters-per-line.

Tips for writing captions:

• Captions should be synchronized and appear at approximately the same time as the audio.
• Words should be verbatim when time allows or as close as possible in other situations.
• Captions should be accessible and readily available to those who need or want them.
• Add music or other descriptions inside square brackets such as [music] or [laughter].
• Captions should appear on-screen long enough to be read.
• It is preferable to limit on-screen captions to no more than three lines.
• Speakers should be identified when more than one person is on-screen or when the speaker is not visible.
• Punctuation is used to clarify meaning.
• Spelling is correct throughout the production.
• Write out sound effects when they add to understanding.
• All words are captioned, regardless of language or dialect.
• Use of slang and accent is preserved and identified.
• Use italics when a new word is being defined or a word is heavily emphasized in speech.

All Kaltura videos are machine captioned at 80% accuracy by default. If ADA complaint captioning is needed for student accommodation, contact the office of Student Accessibility and Advocacy.

For more training and individual help on creating narrated lectures and videos, contact a member of the Instructional Design Team.

When you are narrating a PowerPoint, using Microsoft clip-art in your online presentations is legal. Using pictures that you take and music that you write and record is legal too. However, if you do not own the images or music, you need to make sure you have permission to use the resources for anything that you will be posting online. Ask for permission or consider using only content that is Creative Commons-licensed or is in the public domain. Read more about Creative Commons to keep you and your students informed on copyright issues.

For more training and individual help on creating narrated lectures and videos, contact a member of the Instructional Design Team.

As with all tips and trick lists, this list isn’t comprehensive. It is more of a best practice from those who are frequent users. Some items apply more to one item than the other but most tips are helpful with any type of recording

• Review available software tutorials and get training before you begin.
• Practice recording and playback for quality checks.
• Use an external microphone and make sure you are in a quiet room. Some people like to use a headset but if you are including yourself in the recording, you probably don’t want your students seeing you in a bulky headset.
• Create script of lecture to follow during recording. This is essential, especially for producing quality content for your class and for making captions.
• With video think of your surroundings and clothing choices. Look at the background behind your recording. Is your desk messy? What does the background say about you?
• Chunk material into 10-12 minutes or less videos. Do not produce anything longer than 12 minutes. If possible break the material into small chunks of 5-10 minutes. Shorter is better.
• Know what type of file output is needed
• Use pictures and graphics – respect copyright. Be aware of using copyrighted documents or audio within the recording (think Creative Commons).
• Make sure posted captures contain closed captioning or a transcript of the video is available
• Look into the camera and don’t make any big or sudden movements. What you want (generally speaking) is to have your eyes roughly level with the lens of the camera. This gives the allusion that you are talking directly at your audience.
• Screwing up doesn’t mean starting over. Most capture software has editing features. But let go of perfection. Little gaffes are expected.
• When hitting record, take a few seconds to pause and look into the camera. Before pressing the stop button, take a few seconds and again pause and look into the camera. This gives you flexibility when editing the video.
• Speak Slowly – As with any presentation, think about what you’re saying, take time to breathe and try to pace yourself. Sure you can go back and edit, but consciously thinking about your speed will cut down on the edits you need to make.
• Close out apps – you don’t want email notifications when you are in the middle of recording.
• If you are doing a screencast  clean up your desktop (monitor). If you are creating a how-to tutorial and will be showing your computer desktop, you don’t want to have a messy screen.
• If you are narrating your PowerPoint don’t read your slide bullets – this is your lecture.
• Don’t make any references to current dates, weather, time, or current events unless they pertain to the content of the course. This way the recording can be used in the future without confusion.

Check out the 7 Things you should know about lecture capture published by EDUCAUSE.

For more training and individual help on creating narrated lectures and videos, contact a member of the Instructional Design Team.

Canvas is Albright College’s Learning Management System.  Canvas LMS is an open and reliable web-based software that allows institutions to manage digital learning, educators to create and present online learning materials and assess student learning, and students to engage in courses and receive feedback about skill development and learning achievement.  Canvas includes a variety of built-in course construction and management tools that can be customized to create unique and accessible teaching and learning experiences such as:

• Course content – assignments, dicussions, modules, quizzes and pages
• Course collaboration – groups and conferences using ZOOM
• Course gradebook – grades, Speedgrader
• Course chat – announcements, calendar and syllabus
• Course analytics – reports and new analytics

In addition, Canvas offers many integrations that aid you in the teaching of your course including:

• ZOOM integration – Schedule and conduct meetings in Canvas
• SimCheck – check for plagiarism in a submitted paper
• Kaltura – video storage
• Textbooks – Flatworld, McGraw Hill, Cengage and more

The following resources will help you get started:

• Faculty Canvas Help Center
• Faculty Canvas Guides
• Faculty Canvas 101

We offer a variety of workshops, self-paced courses and 1X1/small group assistance.  Click on the Training and Events section for more information.

Kaltura’s Video Package for Canvas enables anyone with a Canvas course/page to view, record, upload, publish, search, and share video directly from the Canvas environment. There is also a new feature called Kaltura Video Assignment that allows faculty to require students to upload video as an assignment rather than the traditional document upload that is used most of the time.

Basic Features & Tools

• Easy Video Uploading – Upload video using a simple interface into a particular course, at the Moodle main page level (if unsure which course the media will ultimately reside in), or into the Shared Repository to give all faculty access to your video.
• Create webcam videos – Welcome messages, introductions, assignment instructions, simple demonstrations, and other webcam media
• Screen recording – easily record the screen, along with audio and webcam feeds, to create and publish screencasts within Moodle. Instructors and students can record and share lectures, presentations (think PowerPoint), software tutorials, just to name a few ideas.
• Record using multiple cameras – Kaltura provides a software tool called Kaltura Capture. This is a lecture capture tool that allows anyone to create videos and lecture capture files. In addition, Kaltura Capture gives users the option to connect to multiple cameras to record different shots in one video for playback in a custom player.
• Create video quizzes, student video assignments and more using Kaltura’s advanced capabilities
• All videos are machine captioned at 80% accuracy. ADA compliant captioning is available.

The following resources can help you get started.

• Record and Embed a Kaltura Capture Video
• Tips for Recording Kaltura Videos
• Create a Kaltura Quiz
• Create a Kaltura Video Assignment
• Kaltura.com Knowledge Base

For more training and individual help on creating narrated lectures and videos, contact a member of the Instructional Design Team.

ZOOM-based conferencing system allows you to add a virtual meeting room to any of your Camvas courses. You can use this to meet with your students virtually for a formal class, a one-on-one meeting, or for small group work. This stable link will be available to you and your students throughout your course for as many meetings as you want to have. The instructor is automatically the meeting host and can meet and optionally record the meeting for up to 40 minutes at a time with a basic account. If a meeting is recorded, that recording is stored locally on your computer but can then be uploaded to Kaltura and a link to the recording can be placed in your Canvas course.

Important: All faculty must register their account at Albright.zoom.us prior to using this service for the first time. Use your Albright login credentials to create the account. Below are resource documents to help you use ZOOM.

Faculty Canvas Help Center – ZOOM

SimCheck is a web-based system that allows student papers to be submitted and checked for plagiarism.

The system compares student papers with sources available on the Internet, select commercial article databases, and papers submitted at Albright College.  The system compares student papers with sources at other colleges as well.  Generates a Similarity Report that provides text matches and an indicative similarity score that will help you to understand the origin of student work.  Integration with Canvas allows you to grade within the Speedgrader.

Faculty Canvas Help Center – SimCheck

FlatWorld textbooks come complete with a full range of instructor supplements, included homework system, and an easy-to-use customization platform, all at no extra cost.  Students pay a reduced rate for the textbook and it is integrated into the Canvas LMS.  FlatWorld comes with the textbook, homework system, test banks, instructors manual, PowerPoint lectures and more.

Also, McGraw Hill, Pearson, Cengage, Wiley and many others offer integrations within the Canvas LMS that make it very easy for the instructors and students to interact with the content.

Contact a member of the Digital Learning and Innovation Team for more information.

The tools in the faculty toolbox are not exhaustive.  If you are aware of or want to use other tools in the teaching of your courses, reach out to a member of the Digital Learning and Innovation team for more information.