Upgrading Outdated Kaltura Players in Canvas

If you use Kaltura to embed videos in your Canvas courses, you may have noticed a change in the appearance of the video player for newly embedded videos. Kaltura video embeds created since August 5, 2024, use an updated “v7” player, which offers faster loading times and new features, including a searchable transcript panel, which improves accessibility and provides students with another way to engage with video content. This change did not upgrade previously embedded videos, so older video embeds still use the now-outdated “v2” player. Because vendor support is ending for the v2 player, we are encouraging UW-Green Bay instructors to replace old v2 player embeds while preparing future Canvas courses and providing resources in this post which will help you accomplish this task.

Why Upgrade?

It is important to upgrade your video embeds because Kaltura will no longer be providing support for the v2 player after December 30, 2024. While we expect v2 player embeds will continue to function for the foreseeable future, no support will be available for future v2 player issues, which could be caused by updates to Canvas or internet browsers. Upgrading embeds now will ensure that you will not need to do so in a panic if v2 player embeds unexpectedly break in the future. Upgrading will also allow students to take advantage of the new search and transcript features added to the v7 player. More information on this player transition is available in this Universities of Wisconsin KnowledgeBase article.

How to tell if your video uses the v2 player?

A side-by-side comparison image of the v2 and v7 Kaltura players. The v2 player on the left has a rectangular play button. The v7 player on the left has a circle-shaped play button.

To help instructors identify video embeds that use the outdated v2 player, a small warning indicator is now visible in the upper left corner of the v2 player during the first ten seconds of playback. This warning indicator first appeared on December 2, 2024, and is a sure sign that the video embed uses the old player. The v2 and v7 players are also visibly distinct in other ways. Before playing a video, the only control visible on the v7 player is a circle-shaped play button in the middle of the player. The outdated v2 player shows additional controls at the bottom of the player before playback, and the play button in the middle of the v2 player is rectangular. More tips for distinguishing between the video players are available in this IT KnowledgeBase article.

How to upgrade players?

Upgrading a single video embed is easy: edit the Canvas page, delete the existing video embed, and then use the My Media tool to create a new embed of the video from your My Media library. You can find more information on manually replacing video embeds in this guide.

Perhaps you use enough videos in your Canvas courses that the thought of finding and manually replacing all those embeds feels overwhelming. If this is the case, we’ve developed a procedure to upgrade all video embeds in a course at once! This procedure uses the Search tool in Canvas to find all v2 player embeds in a Canvas course and replace them with v7 player embeds automatically. By following this procedure, you may be able to upgrade all of the Kaltura video players in a course in as little as five minutes. We recommend first watching the video below to learn how.

The full set of instructions for using this procedure are available on this guide page. For most courses, running this process one time using the find and replace codes provided in the instructions for replacing “Standard Player LTI Embeds” will update all of the video players in the course. We recommend that instructors who want a quick way to update their players try this once to see if it works. Chances are that it will work, but if it doesn’t, you won’t break anything in your course—the search tool just won’t find any matching players. Rest assured, in the very unlikely scenario that something does go terribly wrong with your find and replace attempt, there is an “undo” button for reverting all changes.

When this find and replace doesn’t work on the first try, the process gets trickier. The find and replace codes for “Standard Player LTI Embeds” won’t find any matching players if you selected alternate players (like the “Download/Share/Embed” and “Simplified” players) in the advanced options menu while embedding or if you embedded by copying iframe embed codes from My Media instead of using the button in the Rich Content Editor. The challenge in these cases is remembering which player(s) you used and determining which alternative find and replace codes from the guide will work to upgrade those embeds. The find and replace codes used in this procedure each target a single, specific embed type. If you mixed and matched the players and methods you used to embed videos in a course, you may have to perform multiple find and replace operations in the same course to upgrade all of the videos.

Need Help?

In those tricky cases, please do not hesitate to reach out to CATL for assistance. CATL staff have the knowledge and experience needed for identifying the player types and embed methods used in a course, and we are happy to provide guidance when the standard find and replace codes do not work in a course. If you have tried the procedure with the standard codes, didn’t have success, and are unsure of what to try next, please fill out this survey to request assistance from CATL. Please only submit courses you are preparing for an upcoming term or sandbox courses that you regularly use and update; CATL staff will not have the capacity to work on concluded courses or honor requests to update “all my courses.”

Resources for Discussing “Thanksgiving” with Your Students

As we approach fall recess and Thanksgiving Day, it’s important to recognize this holiday’s complicated roots. Many of us, including our students, have been taught an overly simplified or even apocryphal version of the “first Thanksgiving” meal shared between English settlers and Wampanoag natives in 1621. The real story is far more complex, interwoven with Indigenous cultures, and marred by the darker impacts of colonization in North America. Though many celebrate Thanksgiving as a day of gratitude and togetherness, for others, it is considered a day of mourning.

Still, this dichotomy makes the history of Thanksgiving a valuable opportunity for deep classroom discussions in relevant courses. If you are considering using Thanksgiving as a point of discussion in your class, this “Teacher Toolkit” provided by the Plimouth Patuxet Museums is one place you could start. Co-developed with historians and other scholars, their site contains lesson plans that invite students to engage in an evidence-based analysis of Wampanoag and English settler relations and the history of Thanksgiving, complete with activities based on primary sources. You might also consider sources that introduce modern-day social and political discussions around Thanksgiving, such as this interview with Kisha James, the granddaughter of one of the founders of the “National Day of Mourning.” CATL hopes you find these resources helpful as we take time to teach and learn a more nuanced and complex version of the Thanksgiving story.

Creating and Using Rubrics for Assessment 

checklist on a clipboard

A rubric is a scoring tool that breaks down the expectations for an assignment into grading criteria. Rubrics serve as a guide for students to complete an assignment successfully and as a measurement tool for instructors to determine to what degree students have met the assignment’s expectations. Rubrics are highly flexible and can be used for a wide variety of assessments. Besides instructor grading, rubrics can also be useful for peer review and student self-evaluation. This guide provides an overview of the different types of rubrics, considerations for creating and using them, as well as examples you can borrow from.

Table of Contents

Advantages of Using Rubrics

Using rubrics for assessment can benefit both the student and the instructor. Rubrics provide transparency in how an assignment will be graded, helping students understand their instructor’s expectations. For instructors, using rubrics can help ensure that their assignment’s grading criteria are aligned with course and assignment outcomes. Grading with a rubric can also increase consistency and objectivity, whether you are the sole grader or are working with a co-teacher or TA. Although creating a rubric requires an initial time investment, it can make your grading process more efficient in the long run.

Rubric Types and Components

Rubrics can be used to assess a wide range of activities – formative and summative assessments, written and oral reports, individual and group projects, and everything in between. Most rubrics list the criteria along the left side and performance level categories (e.g., “meets” or “does not meet” expectations) along the top, creating a matrix for scoring. Other rubrics may omit these performance level categories in favor of freeform comments. A rubric may or may not have points attached to each criterion, depending on how the rubric is being used to assess a student’s work.

Criteria

checklistA rubric defines the criteria used to assess an activity, project, or performance. On a typical rubric, the criteria are listed along the left side, and the document is divided into rows. The number of criteria a rubric contains will vary greatly depending on the complexity of the task being assessed and how granular the instructor would like the grade breakdown to be. A rubric for a simple activity might only have two or three criteria, whereas a rubric for a complex summative assessment might have ten.

Generally speaking, a rubric’s criteria should be:

  • Mutually exclusive. Criteria should not overlap with one another to avoid awarding or detracting points for the same category more than once.
  • Objective. Criteria should be measurable and rely on concrete, observable evidence. Try to avoid using subjective terminology like “interesting” or “good.”
  • Exhaustive. The listed criteria should cover all aspects that an assignment is designed to assess. Likewise, the point total for a rubric should match the point total for the activity.

Additionally, a rubric’s criteria should align with the assignment and course outcomes. As you develop a rubric, compare its criteria with the outcomes of the assignment. Are there any elements you need to assess that are not captured in the rubric? Are there elements in the rubric that are irrelevant to the assignment’s purpose? If you answered “yes” to either of these questions, consider revising your rubric’s criteria to more accurately reflect the assignment’s learning outcomes.

Performance Levels

Most rubrics are broken down into performance levels that describe the quality of a student’s work and/or the level of completeness. Like criteria, the number of performance level categories can vary greatly depending on the type of assessment and the preferences of the instructor. Including more performance levels allows for more granular grading, but also makes a rubric more complex. Performance levels are usually listed as a scale along the top of a rubric, dividing the document into columns.

Example Performance Level Scales

2 Performance Levels 3+ Performance Levels
  • Meets Expectations
  • Does Not Meet Expectations
  • Exceeds Expectations
  • Meets Expectations
  • Does Not Meet Expectations
  • Complete
  • Incomplete
  • Advanced
  • Proficient
  • Developing
  • Beginner
  • Yes
  • No
  • Excellent
  • Good
  • Fair
  • Poor
  • Unacceptable/Inadequate

Descriptions

If you include performance levels, you should also explain what these levels look like for each criterion. For example, if “organization” is a criterion for a written report, what exactly does “excellent” organization in a report look like? What about a paper with “good” or “fair” organization? These descriptions should clarify any ambiguity about the criteria and the performance levels, guiding students in their successful completion of the assignment.

Points

scoreboard

It is common for each criterion of a rubric to have a point value tied to it. The point values can be the same for each criterion, or they can vary if some criteria are a bigger contributing factor to students’ success on the assignment compared to the other criteria. If the rubric uses performance levels, each performance level should be assigned a point value as well. The highest performance level is awarded the maximum point value for a given criterion, with the rest of the performance levels assigned decreasing amounts of points accordingly.

If you’re not sure how to define point categories on a rubric, first determine the maximum number of points you’d like to award for a given criterion. Then, set a point value scale based on this maximum point value and the number of performance categories. Not every point scale will contain “0”, but if the criterion is something that a student could hypothetically earn no points on, you may want to factor that into your point scale.

You will also need to decide if you want each performance level to correlate to a single point value or encompass a range of point values. Using point value ranges allows for more flexibility in terms of scoring but it can also make grading more complicated than using set values. For example, if the “excellent” performance level is worth between 8 and 10 points, that allows you to assign a score of “9,” “9.5”, or any score that falls within that range when grading.

Example Point Scales

Let’s say you have a criterion worth 10 points and five performance level categories. Here are a few ways you could go about setting your point value scale depending on your grading needs. Notice that for the “Point Value Range” example there must not be any gaps or overlaps in the score ranges.

Set Point Values (Omitting Zero) Set Point Values (Including Zero) Point Value Range
Excellent: 10 pts

Good: 8 pts

Fair: 6 pts

Poor: 4 pts

Incomplete/No Submission: 2 pts

 Excellent: 10 pts

Good: 7.5 pts

Fair: 5 pts

Poor: 2.5 pts

Incomplete/No Submission: 0 pts

 Excellent: 10 > 8 pts

Good: 8 > 6 pts

Fair: 6 > 4 pts

Poor: 4 > 2 pts

Incomplete/No Submission: 2 > 0 pts

Using Rubrics Without Points

It is also possible to use a rubric without point values. If you’d like, you can grade students using just the performance categories or by writing freeform comments for each criterion. This can be useful for low-stakes formative assessments, in-class practice activities, and peer review exercises. Using rubrics without points also allows you to provide qualitative feedback for work graded on a complete/incomplete basis.

Recommendations for Using Rubrics

students adding post-it notes to a wall

In addition to the decisions outlined above regarding criteria, performance levels, descriptions, and points, here are a few recommendations to consider when using rubrics. These strategies can help you make the most out of rubrics as both a teaching tool and an assessment tool. Click on a suggestion to expand the accordion and read more.

One of the key advantages of using rubrics for assessment is that they can make your expectations more transparent to students. By sharing the rubric for an assignment in advance, students can use it as a guide to successfully complete the assignment. This practice is beneficial for all students but has particularly positive impacts for certain demographics that may require additional transparency in assignment directions, like first-gen students and neurodivergent students. 

There is quite a bit of research that supports the idea of involving students in the assessment creation process to enhance their engagement and learning (Stiggins & Chappuis, 2005; Lubicz-Nawrocka, 2018; ). One way to achieve this is by developing rubrics together as a class. This work can be done synchronously through brainstorming session during class or asynchronously through a discussion board or survey. By co-authoring rubrics with your students, you allow them to develop a deeper understanding of their own learning and the nature of assessment. If you’d like to learn more about this strategy, this model for collaborative rubric construction from the Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice is a good place to start. 

Sometimes showing is more powerful than telling. In addition to providing written descriptions of your expectations within the rubric itself, consider providing a couple examples of what exemplary, satisfactory, or unsatisfactory work looks like. These could be resources that you’ve created, examples sourced online, or anonymized student work from a previous semester that you've received consent to use. Keep in mind that you can share just part of a work sample if you want it to serve as an example for a specific criterion. 

Although you can grade with rubrics in Microsoft Word or write out comments on paper, using the rubrics tool in Canvas has its own unique advantages. When you attach a Canvas rubric to an assignment or graded discussion, the rubric will also show up in SpeedGrader, making it very quick and easy to grade online submissions. To grade with a Canvas rubric, simply click a box for each criterion to indicate the student’s performance level. You can also type comments for each criterion. If you check the box “use rubric for assignment grading” when attaching a rubric to an assignment, Canvas will even auto-calculate the point total as you fill out the rubric. Plus, once you’ve built a rubric in Canvas, you can easily reuse it in any of your other courses. You can learn more about creating and using Canvas rubrics in the Canvas instructor guides or by setting up and consultation with CATL. 

Example Rubrics

Not sure where to start? See the examples below for rubrics for various assessments, projects, and disciplines. You might also consider using a GAI tool like Microsoft Copilot to speed up the drafting process.

Questions?

CATL is available for consultations if you have any questions about rubrics or are wondering how to create your own. Send us an email or fill out our consultation form to set up a meeting with a CATL member. Or drop us a comment below to let us know how you’ve rubrics in your own courses!

Additional Resources & Further Reading

Web Guides from Other Universities

Books

Articles and Research

Hands of students completing a cloud-shaped puzzle which reads "Online Collaboration"

Up and Running with Remote Group Work

A Case for Group Work

Group work can elicit negative reactions from instructors and students alike. Often enough, students groan about doing it and instructors dread grading it. The process is ripe for communication breakdowns resulting in stress from both perspectives. On top of this, the digital learning environment tends to compound these issues. Why then is group work so prevalent?

The answer is that, when done well, group activities help foster engagement and build relationships. Collaborative work helps students develop important skills like effectively articulating ideas, active listening, and cooperation with peers. Collaborative assignments correlate strongly with student success positioning them as one of eight high-impact practices identified by the Association of American Colleges and Universities. Making group work a worthwhile experience for students requires extra consideration and planning, but the positive gains are worth the effort.

Designing Group Work for Student Success

How can we design collaborative activities that are a quality learning experience for students? Scaffolding makes sure students are confident in their understanding of and ability to execute the activity. UW-Extension has created a helpful guide on facilitating group work that outlines three key suggestions to get you started. First, be sure students understand the purpose of the activity, in terms of what they are supposed to learn from it and why it is a group activity. Second, provide support so students have the necessary tools and training to collaborate. You are clear how and when students are to collaborate or provide suggestions. You ensure students understand how to use the needed technologies. Finally, providing opportunities for peer- and self-evaluation can alleviate frustrations of unequal workload by having students evaluate their own and their peers’ contributions. As challenges arise, guide groups toward solutions that are flexible but fair to all members. When embarking on group projects, be prepared to provide students with guidance about what to do when someone on the team is not meeting the group’s expectations.

One example of this as you design your group projects is to ask yourself whether it’s important students meet synchronously. If so, how might you design the project for students with caregiving responsibilities or with full-time or “off hours” work schedules? These students may not be able to meet as regularly or at the same time as other students. You might also consider whether all students need to hold the same role within the group, or if their collective project be split up based on group roles.

Consider how the group dynamics can impact student experiences. Helping students come up with a plan for group work and methods of holding one another accountable promotes an equitable learning environment. Consider any of these tools to help your students coordinate these efforts:

Assessing Group Work

Equitable, specific, and transparent grading are crucial to group-work success. The Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence of Carnegie Mellon University has a great resource on how to assess group work, including samples. This resource breaks grading group work down into three areas. First, assess group work based on both individual and group learning and performance. Include an individual assessment component to motivate all students to contribute and help them to feel their individual efforts are recognized. Also assess the process along with the product. What skills are you hoping students develop by working in groups? Your choice of assessment should point to these skills. One way to meet this need is to have students complete reflective team, peer, or individual evaluations as described above. Finally, outline your assessment criteria and grading scheme upfront. Students should have clear expectations of how you will assess them. Include percentages for team vs. individual components and product vs. process components as they relate to the total project grade.

Tools for Working Collaboratively

Picking the right tool among the many of what is available is an important step. First, consider how you would like students to collaborate for the activity. Is it important that students talk or chat synchronously, asynchronously, or both? Will students share files?

The following suggestions include the main collaboration tools supported at UWGB. Click to expand the sections for the various tools below.

If you are interested in learning more about any of these tools, consider scheduling a consultation with a CATL member.

Canvas discussions are one option for student collaboration. Operating much like an online forum, discussions are best suited for asynchronous communication, meaning students can post and reply to messages at any time, in any order. If you have groups set up in Canvas, you can create group discussions in which group members can only see one another’s posts. You can also adjust your course settings so that students can create their own discussion threads as well.

Hypothesis is a Canvas integration that lets instructors and students collaboratively annotate a digital document or website. Hypothesis annotation activities can be completed synchronously, such as over a Zoom call, or asynchronously on students' own time. Activities can be created for either the whole class or for small groups and are a great way for students to bounce around ideas about a text or reading. 

Office 365 refers to the online Microsoft Office Suite, including Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. Students can work collaboratively and asynchronously on projects using online document versions of any of these software, which updates changes in nearly real time. Microsoft Office 365 has partial integration with Canvas, allowing students to set up and share Office documents from within Canvas using the Collaborations feature. Students will have to log in to Office 365 through their Canvas course before they can use most features of Canvas and Office 365 integration.

Zoom is one of two web conferencing tools supported by the university, the other being Teams. The Zoom Canvas integration allows instructors to set up meetings within a Canvas course. Students can then access meeting and recording links from within the Canvas course. As such, it is generally easy to for students to access and use. One downside to Zoom is that it is a purely synchronous meeting tool, so students will have to coordinate their schedules or find other ways of including members that may not be able to attend a live meeting. Students that wish to set up meetings amongst themselves are not able to set up meetings with the Canvas integration, though they can use the Zoom desktop app or web portal and their UWGB account.

Microsoft Teams is a collaboration tool that combines web conferencing, synchronous and asynchronous text communications (in the form of chat and posts), and shared, collaborative file space. Microsoft Teams also has partial integration with Canvas, meaning students and instructors can create and share Teams meeting links within the Rich Content Editor of Canvas (in pages, announcements, discussions, etc.).

Putting It into Practice

When we ask students to work collaboratively, it’s important we reveal the “hidden curriculum” by building in the steps they should take to be a successful team. As a starting point, asking students to answer these questions helps clarify the work of the group:

  • “Who’s on the team?”
  • “What are your tasks as a group?”
  • “How will you communicate?” (Asynchronously? Synchronously?)
  • “How will you ensure everyone can meet the deadlines you set?”
  • “If or when someone misses a meeting, how will you ensure that everyone has access to the information they’ll need to help you all complete the project on time?”
  • “When will you give each other feedback before you turn in the final assignment?”

For a ‘bare bones’ group assignment, take the above considerations on designing and assessing groupwork into account and create a worksheet for the student groups to fill out together. Create a Canvas group assignment to collect those agreements, assign it points that will be a part of the whole project grade, and set the deadline for turning it in early so that students establish their plan early enough for it to benefit their group. Scaffolded activities that give students enough structure and agency is a delicate balance, but these kinds of guided worksheets and steps can help students focus their energy on the project, assignment, or task once everyone is on the same page.

Let’s keep the conversation going!

Do you have some tried and tested strategies for helping students coordinate and complete group work online? Send them our way by emailing: CATL@uwgb.edu or comment below!

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) and Acknowledging or Citing Use

UW-Green Bay’s libraries have an excellent student-facing webpage on how to acknowledge or formally cite the use of GAI. This blog is intended to supplement that resource with information more specific to instructors. Professors will be vital in helping students understand both the ethics and practicalities of transparency when employing GAI tools in our work. Please keep the following caveats in mind as you explore this resource.

  • As with all things GAI, new developments are rapid and commonplace, which means everyone needs to be on the alert for changes.
  • Instructors are the ones who decide their specific course policies on disclosing or citing GAI. The information below provides some options for formatting acknowledgments, but they are not exhaustive.
  • Providing acknowledgment for the use of GAI may seem straightforward, but it is actually a very nuanced topic. Questions about copyright implications, whether AI can be considered an “author,” and the ethics of relationships between large AI entities and publishing houses are beyond the scope of this blog. Know, though, that such issues are being discussed.
  • Please remember that it is not only important for students to acknowledge or cite the use of GAI. Instructors need to do so with their use of it, as well.

Acknowledgment or Citation of GAI

There is a difference between acknowledging the use of GAI with a simple statement at the end of a paper, requiring students to submit a full transcript of their GAI chat in an appendix, and providing a formal citation in APA, MLA, or Chicago styles.

  • UWGB Libraries have some excellent acknowledgment examples on their page.
  • UWM’s library page provides basic templates for citations intended to be consistent with APA, MLA, and Chicago styles.
  • There are also lengthy blog explanations and detailed citation examples available directly from APA, MLA, and the Chicago Manual of Style.

Regardless of the specific format being used, the information likely to be required to acknowledge or cite GAI includes:

  1. The name of the GAI tool (e.g., Copilot, ChatGPT)
    Microsoft Copilot, OpenAI’s ChatGPT 4.o (May 23, 2024 version), etc.
  2. The specific use of the GAI tool
    “to correct grammar and reduce the length in one paragraph of a 15-page paper”
  3. The precise prompts entered (initial and follow-up)
    “please reduce this paragraph by 50 words and correct grammatical errors”; follow-up prompt: “now cut 50 words from this revised version”
  4. The specific output and how it was used (perhaps even a full transcript)
    “specific suggestions, some of which were followed, of words to cut and run-on sentences to revise”
  5. The date the content was created
    August 13, 2024

Ultimately, instructors decide what format is best for their course based on their field of study, the nature and extent of GAI use permitted, and the purpose of the assignment. It is important to proactively provide specific information to students about assignments. Professors who are particularly interested in whether students are using GAI effectively may focus on the prompts used or even ask for the full transcript of a session. If, in a specific assignment, the instructor is more interested in students learning their discipline’s citation style, then they might ask for a formal citation using APA format. Although the decision is up to the professor, they should tell students in advance and strongly encourage them to have separate Word documents for each of their classes in which they save any GAI chats (including prompts and output) and their date. That way they have records to go back to; If they use Copilot with data protection, it does not save the content of sessions.

What Messages Might I Give to Students about Using, Disclosing, or Citing GAI?

Instructors should consider how they will apply this information about acknowledgments and citations in their own classes. CATL encourages you to do the following in your work with students.

  1. Decide on a policy for acknowledging/citing GAI use for each course assignment and communicate it in your syllabus and any applicable handouts, Canvas pages, etc.
  2. Reinforce for students that GAI makes mistakes. Students are ultimately responsible for the accuracy of the work they submit and for not using others’ intellectual property without proper acknowledgment. They should be encouraged to check on the actual existence of any sources cited by a GAI tool because they are sometimes “hallucinated,” not genuine.
  3. Talk to students about the peer review and publication processes and what those mean for source credibility compared to the “scraping” process used to train GAI models.
  4. Explain that GAI is not objective. It can contain bias. It has been created by humans and trained on data primarily produced by humans, which means it can reflect their very real biases.
  5. Communicate that transparency in GAI use is critical. Instructors should be clear with their students about when and how they may use GAI to complete specific assignments. At the same time, one of the best ways instructors can share the importance of transparency and attribution is through modeling it themselves (e.g., an instructor disclosing that they used Copilot to create a case study for their course and modeling how to format the disclosure).
  6. Remind students that even if the specific format varies, the information they are most likely to have to produce for a disclosure/acknowledgment or citation is: a) the name of the tool, b) the specific use of the tool, c) the prompts used, d) the output produced, and e) the date of use.
  7. Finally, encourage students to copy and paste all GAI interaction information, including an entire chat history, into a Word document for your course and to save it for future reference. One advantage of Microsoft Copilot with data protections is that it does not retain chat histories. That’s wonderful from a security perspective, but it makes it impossible to re-create that information once a session has ended. They should also know that even GAI tools that save interactions and use them to train their model are unlikely to re-produce a session even if the same prompt is entered.