Changes to Kaltura in Canvas – Effective May 21, 2025

Effective May 21, 2025, UW System is making two updates to the Kaltura My Media video management integration in Canvas. These changes do not require immediate action from instructors, but they may require some instructors to change their workflows.

Removal of “Course Media” Buttons

The “Course Media” and “Course Media Settings” buttons, which are located on the right side of the Canvas course Home page, will be removed from Canvas. These instructor-facing buttons have long been obsolete and were created to help manage recordings made with the Blackboard Collaborate web conferencing tool, which was discontinued at UWGB in 2021.

Using these buttons saves recordings to a course media group instead of personal instructor My Media libraries. This complicates video sharing and the management of video content. Since these buttons are no longer needed for their original purpose, UW System is removing them to eliminate the confusion they create for instructors. To ensure videos remain findable by instructors, Kaltura Administrators have moved videos created in course media groups from Fall 2022 onwards to their owners’ personal My Media libraries.

Recommended Alternative: Access My Media from the Account menu or Rich Content Editor in Canvas to create and upload videos. Please see:

Removal of Add New > YouTube Option

Due to YouTube’s updated terms of service, Kaltura can no longer generate machine-generated closed captions for imported YouTube content. To help ensure that videos in Canvas include captions for accessibility, the ability to add new YouTube entries to My Media will be removed from Canvas. Existing YouTube entries in My Media libraries will remain available.

Recommended Alternative: Embed YouTube videos directly into Canvas using the Rich Content Editor. When embedded directly, the captions that are available on YouTube will be shown in Canvas. Please see:

Thank you for your attention to these updates and your continued commitment to creating an accessible learning environment. If you have any questions about these changes, please contact dle@uwgb.edu.

Honoring the Wisconsin Teaching Fellows & Scholars Participants

Wisconsin Teaching Fellows and Scholars (WTFS) is a signature program of the Universities of Wisconsin. Each year two instructors from each UW campus are selected to represent their institution. Participants spend one year in professional community, and they design and carry out individual scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) projects that are presented at the OPID Spring Conference. This year UWGB had two stellar representatives: Heather Kaminski and Taskia A. Khan. Professor Khan compared two traditional assignments with one that followed Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) principles by evaluating students’ perceptions of clarity, relevance, engagement, confidence, and learning. Professor Kaminski examined the impact on governmental accounting students of engaging in the scaffolded, high-impact practice of creating an Annual Comprehensive Financial Report for local government agencies.

Headshot of Heather Kaminski
Heather Kaminsk
Assistant Professor
Cofrin E. School of Business 
Headshot of Taskia
Taskia A. Khan
Assistant Teaching Professor
Resch School of Engineering

The 2025-2026 WTFS representatives from UWGB will be Professors Alison Jane Martingano and Golam Mushih Tanimul Ahsan. They will join the program next year with new co-facilitator Georjeanna Wilson-Doenges. If this all sounds like a great opportunity to you, watch for the Call for Applications in Fall 2025.

Recognizing Faculty and Staff Completion of the 2024-25 “Teaching with AI” Course

The Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning (CATL) is pleased to acknowledge the following faculty and staff who successfully completed the 2024-2025 cohort of Auburn University’s Teaching with Artificial Intelligence course, reflecting their ongoing dedication to professional development.

Tanim Ahsan

Roshelle Amundson

Iftekhar Anam

John Arendt

Zhuoli Axelton

Erin Bauer

Paul Belanger

Kate Burns

Alise Coen

Stephanie Evenson

Paula Ganyard

Joan Groessl

Lisa Grubisha

Corina Heimke

Patricia Hicks

Jackie Holm

Susan Hopkinson

Brianna Hyslop

Myunghee Jun

Synde Kraus

Qiushan Liu

Breeyawn Lybbert

Brittany Maas

Joanna Morrissey

Valerie Murrenus Pilmaier

Abigail Nehrkorn-Bailey

Amanda Nelson

Rebecca Nesvet

Kiel Nikolakakis

Cristina Ortiz

Jodi Pierre

Kristopher Purzycki

Stephanie Ramadan

Kimberley Reilly

Stephanie Rhee

Robert Riordan

Jolanda Sallmann

Jen Schanen-Materi

Toni Severson

Heidi Sherman

Tracy Smith Leiker

Danielle Sneyd

Karen Stahlheber

David Voelker

Tamara Wang

Erica Wiest

Michelle Wolfe

Julie Wondergem

Chelsea Wooding

Maria Yakushkina

Rojoba Yasmin

Teaching Strategy Spotlight – Debate on High Capacity Wells

Portrait image of a person, Rebecca Abler

Rebecca Abler, Manitowoc Campus, Natural and Applied Sciences Department

About the Professor

Rebecca Abler is a Wisconsin native with a degree in Biology from UW-Oshkosh. She graduated with a PhD in 2004 and then worked as a postdoctoral researcher at UW- Madison. She became a faculty member in 2005 in Manitowoc and is now a member of the Natural and Applied Sciences Department.

Strategy

Image of a circular digital badge with a trophy in the center. Text reads UW-Green Bay Canvas Gallery People's Choice Award.Utilizing Canvas discussion boards as interactive debate platforms for real world, immediate problems. This strategy was one of two awarded the People’s Choice award for the Canvas Gallery.

UWGB Canvas Gallery: A Virtual Exhibition of Teaching. Haven’t checked out the gallery yet? Self-enroll in the Canvas course and see all the projects.

Representative Assignment

Debate on High-Capacity Wells

Description

This assignment is a Canvas Discussion Board where students either take sides in a debate on a real-world topic or vote as an audience member. Students rotate the role they take in each different discussion. They get to apply knowledge from their course to a real-world situation.

Modality and context

Face-to-face or online. Developed for an introductory Environmental Science course.

Purpose

This activity was originally created for face-to-face classes. Students seemed to be more engaged during field trips to streams and natural areas and issues connected to the real world. The instructor wanted to use that “reality” to engage even online students, and so the panel discussions were born, focused on real-world activities.

Assignment Details

In the first example of the debate, students are provided with the topic of High-Capacity Wells. They are given their roles, which could be part of the Farm Bureau, the Central Sands Lake Association or the Legislature who will vote on the proposal. The two sides are given a date to propose opening arguments, the audience is then given a date to pose questions, the two groups are given more time to answer the questions, and then the legislature votes. All students are given source material to prepare for their task in the role-playing. The tasks are laid out in a way that makes sense for this real-world activity and gives the students an opportunity to delve into the issues that are impacting their world.

Applying This Idea to Your Classroom

Canvas discussion boards are a tool that everyone has access to. Turning an idea of interest that is applicable to your area into a debate on a discussion board is generally possible in most subject areas. Give it a try with your students and see how it goes!

Teaching Strategy Spotlight – PostSecret Writing Project

Photo of a person, Jonas Gardsby, standing in front of trees.
Jonas Gardsby, Green Bay Campus, English Department and Writing & Applied Arts

About the Professor

Jonas Gardsby is in his third year as an Assistant Professor at UWGB. Previously, he completed an MFA in Creative Writing and an MA in English at the University of Colorado. He earned his PhD in early modern literature at the University of Minnesota.

Strategy

Image of a circular digital badge with a trophy in the center. Text reads UW-Green Bay Canvas Gallery People's Choice Award.Using the PostSecret Project as a way for his creative writing students to add psychological depth and an element of the unexpected to their fiction.

This strategy was one of two awarded the People’s Choice award for the UWGB Canvas Gallery: A Virtual Exhibition of Teaching. Haven’t checked out the gallery yet? Self-enroll in the Canvas course and see all the projects.

Representative Assignment

PostSecret Creating Writing Exercise & Discussion

Description

This is both a creative writing assignment and a Canvas discussion board. It draws on PostSecret, a social and art experiment where people anonymously create postcards that share something they have never told anyone. Students choose one of these secrets and apply them to characters they have already created.

Modality and Context

Face-to-face or online. This assignment is the last of six exercises completed by creative writing students who are drafting a full story. Each exercise teaches some element of craft as well as changing the story they are working on in a way that gives it a renewed energy. The PostSecret activity is the last assignment before piecing the whole story together.

Purpose

This activity helps the writer to more fully realize a character by uncovering a previously unexplored dimension that affects the character’s motivations and actions.

Assignment Details

Having already worked on elements of fiction like plot, setting, scene, and character development, the student is asked to browse a Canvas page featuring postcards that display art and written secrets, arranged into different categories like addiction, lying, and regret. The student chooses a secret, gives it to a character they have been developing, and writes a monologue for the character about the secret. After completing this activity, they share the monologue on a discussion board. Peers reply with insights into how this secret is being used to advance the narrative of the original story.

Applying This Strategy to Your Courses

This may seem like an assignment that could only work in creative writing classes, but the idea of adding something surprising to what you already know can be employed in many areas of writing, from policy debates to nursing case studies. Add an unexpected element for students to work within, through which they can generate surprising solutions in their writing. As was done with the PostSecret project, you can give students a list of choices or ask them to come up with an unexpected element and see how they handle it and how that shapes their thinking.