The logo for Hypothesis (stylized as “hypothes.is”).
Hypothesis, a “social annotation tool” that integrates with Canvas, is a digital and social take on the classic practice of physically writing in the margins of a text. It is an annotation overlay that you can add to any PDF or website reading assigned in your Canvas course. Adding an annotation to a passage is as simple as selecting a word or phrase and then typing the annotation in the Hypothesis overlay. Students and instructors can view and reply to each other’s annotations to ask and answer questions and build upon each other’s ideas. This post contains ideas for using Hypothesis in your course and instructions for creating activities with the Hypothesis Canvas integration, which is available in all UWGB courses.
Hypothesis Use Cases
The Hypothesis overlay being used to annotate a New York Times article on a reptile fossil.
Annotation with Hypothesis can facilitate many types of class activities. Here are a few example activities:
Assign a reading and ask students to leave questions as annotations on passages they find difficult. Instructors can reply to annotations to answer these questions, use the questions to inform lessons and follow-up resources, or assign students to review and answer their peers’ questions.
Instructors can add their own annotations to a reading before assigning it to students to create a guided reading experience that signals areas of importance and offers clarification at potential sticking points. Instructor annotations can include questions for discussion that students can reply to right “in the margins” of the reading, placing discussions in context.
Task students with developing a glossary layer on an assigned text by adding annotations to difficult words, passages, or allusions. Encourage students to include definitions, contextual research, and possible interpretations in their annotations.
Present an example of an essay, lab write-up, or proof that intentionally has errors. Ask students to identify and correct these missteps by adding annotations to the document either as a group or as an entire class.
Providing these resources to your students can help them understand how to use Hypothesis and how to write quality annotations. The insights in these articles are valuable for anyone new to Hypothesis and digital annotation, so we also encourage instructors to review them!
Technical support for Hypothesis is available by contacting the vendor’s support team through their simple Help Request web form and additional user guides are available on Hypothesis’s Help website. As always, CATL staff are available to provide consultations to discuss how to best leverage Hypothesis in your courses! Request a CATL consultation online or email your questions to us at catl@uwgb.edu.
Using audio and video in a Canvas course can open the door to many possibilities, including multimedia discussion boards, recorded student presentations, using a flipped classroom model, and more. Still, instructors must make a number of choices regarding what tools to use and how to use them, from picking a webcam recorder to figuring out the best way to share videos in Canvas.
In this article you’ll find our recommendations on what tools and methods to use to support audio and video in your Canvas course, including:
Kaltura Capture, Kaltura webcam recorder, and Kaltura (My Media), the university’s supported solutions for recording, storing, and sharing media. Both tools are available to you and your students for free. We will also discuss the recording features in PowerPoint and how you turn your PowerPoints into lecture videos.
YouTube, Vimeo, and other third-party video platforms. Though the university doesn’t support these platforms, we will cover recommendations on how to embed or link to these sources.
PlayPosit, a powerful tool for making your audio and video content more interactive.
Recording Audio and Video
Kaltura Capture
When you or your students need to record audio or video content, Kaltura Capture will suit your needs in most instances. The app is simple to use and offers screen recording and webcam recording capability, making it an ideal tool for video lectures or prerecorded student presentations. After downloading and installing it on your device, you can use Kaltura Capture to:
Record the content on your computer screen. If you have a second monitor connected to your computer, you can choose which display to record.
Record video of yourself with your computer’s built-in or external webcam.
Record audio of yourself speaking with your computer’s built-in or external microphone.
On Windows, you can also record the audio from your computer system, such as when playing a video during a screen recording. (You must enable this feature in the application settings first.)
Kaltura Webcam Recorder
If you don’t need Kaltura Capture’s screen recording features, you can use Kaltura webcam recorder to record audio and video of yourself instead. It can be launched from your browser without downloading any software. Simply open the app from My Media in Canvas or within the Rich Content Editor while editing a Canvas page, discussion, assignment, quiz, or announcement. The webcam recorder is a quick and easy option for providing video feedback or recording a video introduction for a discussion board.
To launch the webcam recorder while editing an item in Canvas, click on the Kaltura icon (rainbow flower) in the toolbar of the Rich Content Editor. In the pop-up menu, click the “Add New” button and select “Webcam Recorder” from the dropdown menu.
Kaltura Capture and the Kaltura webcam recorder are not the only means of recording audio and video out there, and they may not work for every situation. You are welcome to explore other recording software, but know that if you use a tool that is not provided by the university, it also means that you will be on your own in terms of finding support if you need help.
It’s worth mentioning that there is one recording method we would discourage instructors from using: the “Record/Upload Media” option in the Rich Content Editor. First, Canvas has a limit on file size for media recorded with this feature. And second, captions (both machine-generated and professional) cannot be added to recordings made with this tool. To maximize accessibility and save yourself a potential headache, use a different recording software and store your recordings in Kaltura.
Storing and Sharing Your Media
Kaltura (My Media)
Whether you choose to record with Kaltura Capture or another application, we highly recommend uploading your recordings to Kaltura. One of the biggest advantages is that Kaltura provides unlimited long-term cloud video and audio storage at no additional cost. Once an audio or video file is in Kaltura, it is also incredibly easy to link or embed it anywhere in a Canvas course.
Kaltura makes it easy to manage your media as well. You can apply tags and add descriptions to help organize your content, sort and filter by a variety of attributes, and even make simple edits to your media with the Kaltura video editor, such as trimming out unwanted sections at the beginning or end of a screen capture recording.
The Kaltura video editor is great for when you need to cut out sections of a video clip, trim the beginning or end of a clip, or create a short clip from a longer video.
Using Kaltura is also best practice for accessibility. When you upload your media, machine-generated English captions are automatically applied. When a student makes a formal disability accommodation request for captions through Student Accessibility Services, professional captions can be easily ordered and applied to your Kaltura media as well.
Quick Tip: Uploading Media from a Smartphone to Kaltura
What do you do if you want to have students create audio or video content, but they don’t all have access to a computer with a webcam? Fortunately, an Apple or Android smartphone can do the trick in these situations. First, students can record their media with the camera application on their phone. To upload a recording from your phone to Kaltura, download the Kaltura MediaSpace GO application for iOS or Android and then follow these instructions to configure the app’s setup. Once the app is configured, you can upload to Kaltura (My Media) in just a few taps.
Other Tools for Storing and Sharing Your Media
Since video and audio files can be large, it is best to pick a storage solution in which your videos are saved to a cloud or hosted on a website. YouTube, while not a technology supported by the university, is still an option that supports both share links and embed codes. If you are comfortable with using OneDrive, you can also store recordings in your UWGB OneDrive cloud and share links to those recordings, though there is not currently a supported method for embedding these recordings in Canvas.
Please note that it is not advisable to upload media to your Canvas course’s files area. Video and audio files will quickly take up your course’s limited file storage space. Using a cloud storage system for your media helps solve this issue, as media embedded from platforms like Kaltura or YouTube do not count against this quota.
The “Files” area in Canvas is good for storing documents and images that are linked or embedded in your course, however it is not ideal for larger files like audio and video.
Sharing Media from External Sources
For media that you do not own and that is hosted outside Kaltura, such as YouTube videos and Ted Talks, you have a few options for sharing. Depending on the source, you might be able to search for and embed the content from within Canvas’s Rich Content Editor. For the rest, you can use an embed code or a simple hyperlink.
Canvas Integrations
Films on Demand, TedEd, Vimeo, and YouTube all have Canvas integrations that you can access from the Rich Content Editor. While editing a page or post, click on Apps (the plug icon) in the toolbar of the Rich Content Editor and then “View All” to select a tool. Use the tool’s interface to search for and embed your video.
The YouTube Canvas integration lets you search for and embed media from within the Canvas Rich Content Editor.
Embed Codes
If your video source is not listed above, check to see if there is an embed code available on the website where the media is hosted (often this will be an option when you click to “share” a video). If you have the embed code, you can add the media to a Canvas page, discussion, etc. by going to Insert > Embed in the Rich Content Editor and pasting the embed code.
Hyperlinks
If all else fails, you can add a hyperlink to the media using the Links button in the Rich Content Editor and then “External Links.” Make sure to give the hyperlink a descriptive name, rather than just pasting the whole URL on the page. This is not only best practice for accessibility, but it also helps contextualize the links before a student clicks on them.
Enhancing Audio and Video Activities
Want to bring your audio and video content to the next level? Tools like PlayPosit can help by adding interactions for students to engage with while they watch. PlayPosit bulbs can include content from Kaltura, YouTube, and Vimeo, so you can mix and match content you’ve created yourself with other videos you’ve found online. Adding a few simple interactions to a video takes just a few minutes of setup. You can learn more about this powerful media tool in this overview guide and another guide on potential use cases.
Questions?
Using audio and video in a course can seem intimidating at first, but with the right tools and training, it can also be harnessed for effective teaching. As always, we also welcome you to request a CATL consultation if you’d like to learn more about developing learning materials or activities with audio and video. As you explore your media options, you may also find the resources below useful.
In an effort to help instructors in their work, CATL brainstormed some of the best technology time-savers and tips we have to share with you. Here’s our “Top 10” list. We encourage you to save it for future reference and use.
Have end-of-semester questions about Canvas, such as how to send grades to SIS or give a student extended access to a course for an Incomplete? Consult our End-of-Semester Canvas Survival Guide for answers to these and other frequently asked questions.
Work smarter and not harder by copying over your Canvas materials the next time you teach a course. Besides doing a full course import, did you know that you can also quickly copy a single module or module item to another course or share one with another instructor? You can even reuse imported course announcements by using the delay posting option to schedule them to post at a future date and time.
Speed up your grading and boost transparency by setting up rubrics in Canvas. Once you’ve added a rubric to an assignment or a graded discussion and checked the box to use it for grading, Canvas will calculate the point total automatically when you use it to grade. Plus, rubrics can also be directly tied to your course’s outcomes in Canvas.
Encourage or re-engage specific groups of students using the analytics and inbox features. Check out the weekly student activity trend data available in New Analytics to see which students may need a little prodding or use the “message students who” feature in the Canvas gradebook to give reminders and/or praise for an assignment.
Want to fine tune the pacing of your course? You can add requirements to a module to force students to work through its contents in order. Once you have requirements set up, prerequisites can also be added which require a student to meet the requirements of a previous module before accessing the next.
Even if you’ve used Kaltura Capture before, you may not be familiar with all the different options for recording, such as the ability to choose a source for each output and toggle your webcam, screen recording, and audio on/off. In Windows, you can even enable system audio to capture audio from videos playing on your computer.
With PlayPosit, you can enhance course videos in minutes by adding interactions for learners to engage with, such as polls or free-response questions. If you create a graded bulb, students’ grades also sync with Canvas automatically.
If you’re looking for ways to add more engagement to your synchronous online lectures, try preparing in-class quizzes or polls for your Zoom meetings. Polls and quizzes can be added to Zoom meetings through the Zoom web portal and then pushed out to students during the meeting. Want to try something similar in an in-person class? Consider exploring PlayPosit’s Broadcast feature.
We know instructors and students are both tired at this point in the semester. We at CATL want to provide as much help and support as we can as you work to finish up both teaching and grading. One thing we can offer is a list of resources about Canvas that may make the grading process a bit easier or even show you things that you didn’t know you could do. Click on one of the suggestions below to expand the accordion and see the related guides.
Quizzes and Assignments
Provide a student with an extension for submitting an assignment or quiz.
Assigning Alternate Assignment Due Dates to Specific Students – Do you need to grant an extension on an assignment or quiz to a specific student or students? This guide shows you how to set up alternate student-specific due dates and availability dates.
Provide a student with additional time or attempts for a quiz.
Regrading Quiz Questions (Classic Quizzes) - If you find an issue with a multiple choice, true/false, or multiple answer quiz question after students have taken a quiz, this guide explains how you can use the regrade option to change a question’s correct answer and automatically award points for the question to some or all students.
Regrading Quiz Questions (New Quizzes) - If you’ve already made the switch to using “New Quizzes” in Canvas, this guide explains the regrade options in the new tool.
Finalizing Grades
Enter grades for participation, in-class work, or other work submitted outside of Canvas.
Create Grade Columns for Non-Submission Assignments - Non-submission assignments are useful for providing grades for work outside of Canvas. Creating a non-submission assignment adds a column to the Canvas gradebook for you to enter these grades.
Enter extra credit.
Awarding Extra Credit in Canvas - Canvas has a few methods for handling extra credit. You might award “bonus” points by creating an assignment worth 0 points, or by adding extra points to a regular assignment or quiz in SpeedGrader, for example.
Adjust final grades by entering “0s” for missing work.
Total Grade Calculation with Missing Assignments – This guide explains how Canvas calculates final grades and the importance of regularly entering zeroes for missing work in the Canvas gradebook.
Send final grades from Canvas to SIS.
Sending Final Grades to SIS - This guide explains how to use the time-saving grade sync feature that allows you to quickly send final grades from Canvas to SIS.
Student Course Access
Set or adjust course access dates.
Course Dates and Access FAQ and Information - Read this guide to learn about how term dates and course dates work in Canvas and how you can allow or restrict your students’ ability to view the Canvas course after its conclusion.
Provide students assigned a grade of "Incomplete" with extended course access.
Extend Student Access Tool - Do you have a student taking an “Incomplete” in your course? This guide shows you how to use the “Extend Student Access” tool togive an individual student more time to access and finish work in the Canvas course.
Other Canvas Tips
Recover deleted items.
Using "Undelete" to Recover Deleted Items - If you accidentally deleted something in your course while cleaning it up and need to get it back, this guide explains how to access your course’s “undelete” page to restore deleted content.
Where to Get Help
You can get 24/7 support from Canvas by live chat, phone, or email by clicking the “Help” button in the Canvas global navigation menu bar on the left side of any page in Canvas.
As always, CATL is also here to help you design your course, set up your assignments, and work through the process of grading. Fill out our consultation request form to schedule a meeting with a member of the CATL team.
The PlayPosit logo; in written copy, PlayPosit is written with no spaces and both “p’s” capitalized.
What is PlayPosit?
PlayPosit is a platform for building and viewing interactive video content. With PlayPosit, learners are invited to engage in interactions at various points throughout a video. These interactions can be simple or complex, and graded or ungraded. PlayPosit’s uses are broad and varied, but one thing they all have in common is that they can help increase the engagement and attentivenessof learners, particularly in asynchronous environments.
An interactive video built with PlayPosit is called a “bulb.” A bulb is made up of a video or series of videos and a set of timestamped interaction points. When building a bulb, you can import videos from YouTube, Kaltura (My Media), and Vimeo, and then arrange and trim the clips as necessary. After that step, you pick points on the timeline to add interactions—multiple choice questions, polls, reflective pause points, and more—and then determine other important settings, like whether the interactions will be worth points or whether students can attempt a bulb multiple times.
When building a PlayPosit bulb, you can pull in videos right from your Kaltura (My Media) library, such as lectures recorded with Kaltura Capture.
When a viewer watches a PlayPosit bulb, the video clips play until the player reaches the first interaction point on the timeline. Though it depends on the bulb’s settings, generally video playback will pause at an interaction point and a menu will pop up, asking the viewer to answer a question, complete an activity, or engage with an external resource. After doing so, the viewer can click “continue” and then proceed with the video until the next interaction, and so on, until they reach the end of the PlayPosit bulb.
An example of what the PlayPosit player looks like from a learner’s perspective. In this scenario, the student submitted the incorrect answer to a true/false question presented at the end of the video. As in this example, you can add automatic feedback for a correct or incorrect answer when building a PlayPosit interaction.
PlayPosit Canvas Integration
PlayPosit at UWGB is integrated with Canvas, and instructors can build and assign bulbs directly within their Canvas courses. Instructors can add bulbs to their Canvas course as either graded or ungraded activities:
Instructors can build and assign graded PlayPosit bulbs within Canvas assignments that sync with the Canvas gradebook.
Instructors can build and add ungraded PlayPosit bulbs to their course by embedding a bulb in a page with the Rich Content Editor or adding a bulb as an external tool link in a module.
Graded Bulbs
Graded bulbs are bulbs that are tied to the Canvas gradebook. Graded bulbs can contain both automatically graded interaction types like multiple choice questions and manually graded interaction types like free response. To create a graded bulb, you will create a Canvas assignment and then select “PlayPosit” from the “External Tool” submission options. You can read more about how to create graded bulbs in this knowledgebase article.
You will find PlayPosit as an option in the “External Tool” submission type in Canvas assignments.
For a graded PlayPosit assignment, a student’s score in the Canvas gradebook is calculated by applying the percentage of points earned out of points possible in the bulb to the total points the assignment is worth in Canvas. For example, let’s say you create a Canvas assignment worth ten points and link a PlayPosit blub within that assignment which contains two questions worth a point each. A student who answers one out of two questions correctly would earn 1 out of 2 possible points in the bulb (50%), which would translate to a score of 5 out of 10 (50%) in the Canvas gradebook.
Ungraded Bulbs
Ungraded bulbs are completely independent from the Canvas gradebook. While they can still have interactions that are worth points in PlayPosit, these points are not tied to any gradebook item in Canvas. For ungraded bulbs, points and grades are only there for the learner to check and assess their own understanding. If you wish to add an ungraded bulb to your course, you can either add it to a module as an item or embed it with the Rich Content Editor (the editor found in Canvas pages, discussions, etc.).
One advantage of the PlayPosit Canvas integration is that learners can complete PlayPosit activities without going to an external site. For example, this PlayPosit bulb linked in a module will open in Canvas when a user clicks on it (unless the “Load in a New Tab” box was checked when adding the link).
Types of Interactions
PlayPosit has eight main types of interactions. Each type of interaction is either auto-graded, manually graded, or ungraded by default. For graded interactions, keep in mind that the points only impact students’ grades in Canvas if the bulb is added to the course as a Canvas assignment. Below are the types of PlayPosit interactions. You can also read descriptions of the interaction types in this PlayPosit guide.
PlayPosit’s interaction menu also includes the option to use a template for building an interaction. Templates still use one of the eight interaction types but have pre-sets for common question styles. For example, the vocabulary matching template makes use of the “fill in the blank” interaction type.
Auto-Graded Interactions
Auto-graded interactions are graded by PlayPosit. When you create one of the interactions below, you will be asked to provide the correct answer(s) for auto-grading. These interactions can also be set to “0 points” if you wish for them to not count toward a student’s score.
Multiple choice
Check all
Fill in the blank
Manually Graded Interactions
Manually graded interactions require the instructor to read students’ submissions and then assign a grade. These interactions can also be set to “0 points” if you wish for them to be ungraded.
Free response
Ungraded Interactions
Ungraded interactions are not scored and therefore are set to “0 points.” You can assign points to these interactions if you choose, in which case PlayPosit will award full points for completing the interaction (clicking “continue” for a pause or web embed, or submitting a response for a poll or discussion).
Pause
Web embed
Poll
Discussion
When reviewing a student’s PlayPosit submission, you can change the points they received for an interaction and in some cases, like free response interactions, leave feedback.
Questions?
As you explore PlayPosit, we encourage you to consult PlayPosit’s extensive knowledgebase of instructor guides, including this guide for Canvas users. You can contact PlayPosit support directly by clicking the “Contact” link on their support site and filling out their web form. PlayPosit also offers live trainings, webinars, and office hours. If you are interested in any of these vendor-led training opportunities, contact dle@uwgb.edu to learn more.
As always, we also welcome you to request a CATL consultation if you’d like to see a demo of PlayPosit or talk through how you might use it in your course.
