Recommended Tools and Methods for Using Audio and Video in Canvas

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.

The "Kaltura" button in the Canvas Rich Content Editor, along with the "Add New" media dropdown menu
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.

Microsoft PowerPoint

If you already use PowerPoint to develop your lecture materials, consider using its built-in audio and video recording capabilities to create your pre-recorded lecture videos. Audio narrations can be recorded within PowerPoint slide by slide. Additionally, you can enable your webcam and record video footage of yourself during your narrations. To make your presentations mobile-friendly and more accessible, we recommend exporting your narrated PowerPoints as video files, uploading them to Kaltura (My Media), and then embedding the videos in Canvas. This LinkedIn Learning video is a great resource for getting started with recording narrations in PowerPoint.

Other Tools for Recording Audio and Video

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 as it appears in Canvas
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" tab in Canvas
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 video search using the YouTube Canvas integration
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.

 

Top 10 Technology Tips & Time-Savers

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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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. Consider using Kaltura (My Media) for the most streamlined audio/video experience in Canvas. You can upload and store your audio and video files in Kaltura, which has much greater storage capacity than many other options, and then easily embed your media in Canvas or provide a share link.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. If you are using Zoom for synchronous online classes or office hours, remember that you can schedule meetings through the Canvas Zoom integration. If you record your meetings, you can also publish these recordings for students to access in Canvas through the Zoom integration.
  10. 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.

Enhance Course Videos with PlayPosit in Mere Minutes

If you’ve been tuned in to the CATL blog or Teach Tuesday newsletter at all over the past year, you’ve likely gained at least a passing understanding of what PlayPosit is. CATL staff have been eager to share our excitement about what this interactive video platform can do to boost learner engagement in courses at UW-Green Bay! PlayPosit is a very powerful and flexible tool, and that can make it seem intimidating to many instructors. While you can spend hours in the PlayPosit designer crafting your masterpiece video experience, in truth, some of the most impactful uses of PlayPosit can be implemented by instructors in 10 minutes or less! In this post, you will find a few examples of how you can leverage PlayPosit in simple ways that will give you immediate feedback from students, reinforce key concepts, and provide opportunities for your students to interact with you and collaborate with each other, all by using your pre-existing course videos.

Get Instant Feedback from Your Students

Screenshot of a PlayPosit bulb with an interaction which asks students for immediate feedback on the video

One of the most simple and effective uses of PlayPosit is adding a prompt at the end of a video where students can submit any questions or feedback on the content. Adding one “free response” interaction at the end of each course video can help you continuously monitor the “pulse” of the course and get immediate feedback from students on their understanding of the content. You can ask students to identify the muddiest point of the video for them and the resources and actions they need to better understand it. This type of metacognitive question can help students better identify the concepts which will require the most study to master. If you teach a large lecture class where the labor of parsing student responses would not be sustainable, you can instead add one or more “Poll” interactions to gain a quantitative insight of your students’ perception of their understanding of the content in each video. This poll data can help direct your planning of class time and additional resources for review.

Reinforce Key Concepts with Quiz Breaks

Another simple use of PlayPosit is to insert a “quiz” question at an important checkpoint of a video to help reinforce a key concept that has just been covered. Adding quiz breaks to your video can help students solidify their comprehension of the material and keep their active attention throughout the video (Szpunar et al., 2013). PlayPosit offers several interaction types suitable for this purpose: Multiple Choice, Check All, Free Response, and Fill in the Blank. Consider adding a question at the end, at a logical break near the midpoint of the video, or anytime the video shifts gears from one topic to another. You can give students multiple (or unlimited) attempts to answer correctly and (optionally) add a small point value to the assigned PlayPosit video to give your students extra incentive to engage with the content on-schedule.

Collaboratively Annotate a Video

Screenshot of the “Template Gallery” in the PlayPosit designer

PlayPosit’s “discussion” interaction type can be used to facilitate an exercise that asks students watch a video and post to a class-wide discussion board that is built-in to the video player. In addition to videos in your personal Kaltura My Media library, instructors can incorporate public YouTube and Vimeo videos into their PlayPosit activities, so consider this use case if you use any YouTube or Vimeo videos as required viewing in your course. Through PlayPosit’s Template Gallery, you can quickly add a single customizable discussion interaction that students can post to throughout the entire duration of the video.

Students can use the discussion interaction to collaboratively annotate the video to add their interpretations, cite criticism or link to pertinent online resources, and pose their own questions for class discussion. Each comment posted in the discussion is timestamped with the position of the video at which the student paused and submitted the comment. Students and instructors can select the timestamp on a post to immediately jump the video player to that moment of the video and make threaded replies to build off each other’s contributions. PlayPosit discussions are a great way to get a class to go on a deep exploration of a short video or clip that warrants repeated viewings.

Maximum Impact, Minimal Time

Each of the use cases described in this post involves using PlayPosit to add only one or two interactive elements to a course video. If you already use videos in your course, you can create any of these in under 10 minutes! Watch the video below to see the process from start-to-finish in under 3 minutes:

These PlayPosit enhancements to your course videos can give you big returns on just a little bit of time invested. Teaching with asynchronous videos doesn’t have to feel like lecturing into the void when you build formative exercises directly into the videos and give students ways to provide you with immediate feedback each time they watch a video. You’ll get a clear picture of which students are engaging with your video content, and, since you’ve turned the video watching experience into an active one, your students will be more likely to engage and stay engaged with course videos.

We hope these examples will spark you to take the first step to using PlayPosit in your courses. CATL is happy to provide consultations both to instructors who are looking to get started with PlayPosit as well as instructors who have already taken their first steps and are now inspired to build beyond the fundamentals and create interactive video masterpieces. Fill out our consultation request form to schedule a time to meet with a CATL team member or reach out to us at catl@uwgb.edu with your questions and ideas!

PlayPosit Use Cases

PlayPosit has many potential applications for teaching, so it can be overwhelming to decide how you might use it in your own course. We’ve collected some use cases spanning a range of disciplines and course formats as a way to help you think about how other instructors are already using the tool, and then, by extension, how you might adopt it for your own teaching style and content area. The use cases below are organized by four of PlayPosit’s features: 

  • Core Platform, which refers to PlayPosit’s interactive video builder and player used for asynchronous learner engagement 
  • Broadcast, which is PlayPosit’s live audience response system used for synchronous learner engagement 
  • Learner Made Content, which refers to PlayPosit bulbs or interactions created by learners and assessed by instructors 
  • Peer Review, in which learners review and provide feedback on PlayPosit content created by their peers 

Core Platform (Asynchronous Learner Engagement)

Knowledge Checks

One of the most common ways to use PlayPosit’s main platform is to add knowledge checks to videos. These knowledge checks might be as simple as an objective true-false question, or as complex as a subjective free response question requiring students to reflect, analyze, or extrapolate. 

PlayPosit player, paused with a multiple choice question popped up.
In this example by the Digital Learning staff at the University of Arizona, the instructor added a knowledge check in their syllabus overview video about the number of attempts for reading quizzes.

Since PlayPosit bulbs can be either graded or ungraded, you can pick the option that works best for the function of the bulb. If you wish to keep the knowledge checks in your lectures low-stakes and for the sole benefit of the users, they might remain ungraded. Alternatively, perhaps you wish to replace some of your formative assessments (e.g. a post-lecture quiz) with an in-lecture quiz in the form of a PlayPosit bulb, in which case you would want to create a graded item. Learn more about graded and ungraded bulbs, as well as the types of interactions available, in this other PlayPosit toolbox article. 

Engagement Checks

Another way to keep your PlayPosit interactions low stakes is to use engagement checks, rather than knowledge checks. In distance learning environments, instructors often worry that students won’t watch their videos. PlayPosit interactions can be built in to ensure just that. For these scenarios, you might make use of the poll and pause point interaction types in particular. 

Polls function like a multiple-choice question but with no correct or incorrect answers. Since there are no right answers, polls are a simple, low-stakes way to add student engagement your bulbs. If the bulb is graded and you add a point value to the polling interaction, students are awarded points simply for responding.  

Pause points are interactions where students simply have to click a button to continue. Pause points might be useful for adding extra tips or reminders or linking to external resources. Like polls, if you add a point value to the interaction, students will receive full points for simply “completing” the interaction when used in a graded bulb. 

PlayPosit player paused with a pause point interaction popped up. The interaction includes a statement with a hyperlink and a blue "Continue" button.
In this example, a pause point interaction was added to direct learners to a supplemental resource in the form of an external link.

Learner Notes 

The notes feature is not an interaction type, but a default feature built into the PlayPosit video player. Learners can add timestamped notes while watching PlayPosit bulb, making it easy for them to go back and review certain points of a bulb at a later time. It also lets learners add content like images, links, and equations to their notes. If you would like students to make use of this feature, consider adding a few pause point interactions to your videos with suggestions for what points to include in their notes, like an important equation or acronym. You can also use PlayPosit’s pre-built learner notes template from the template gallery. 

PlayPosit player with the "notes" tab selected. The learner has left a note with a link.
In this example, the learner left a note at 0:25 in the video with a “note to self” and a link to a web resource.

Potential Use Cases

In the first session of a synchronous course, instructors often spend a good chunk of time going over the syllabus. With PlayPosit, you could instead record a syllabus overview video and then add knowledge checks with questions like, “when are office hours?” or “how many times can you take a quiz?”. See this example from the University of Arizona if you want to try it out from the learner's perspective.

In both empirical studies and student surveys, the prevailing messaging around lecture videos is that shorter is better. If you have a 45-minute lecture recording, consider breaking it down into smaller chunks of 5–15 minutes and then delivering them as PlayPosit bulbs. Adding PlayPosit interactions can incentivize students to watch all the way through and help you track which students are interacting with the lectures.

Some instructors are moving away entirely from synchronous lectures, opting for pre-recorded content delivery. Synchronous class time, whether face-to-face or virtual, can then be used to answer student questions, go over homework, or hold class discussions instead. One way to start is by using bulbs for pre-lab training, in which you assign PlayPosit bulbs in advance that deliver the necessary background information needed to engage in a lab, studio, or other hands-on activity that takes place during class.

Several PlayPosit interactions or features allow asynchronous viewers to contribute their thoughts and questions. Instructors can review learner feedback to get a sense of what is working in the class and identify concepts that require additional review. See our follow-up posts from What Will You Carry Forward?, Collecting and Working with Mid-Semester Feedback, and Building Information Literacy and Racial Literacy Together for a few examples. The bulbs in each of these posts use a different type of interaction (pause point, discussion, and free response, respectively) so it may be worth taking a look at all three to compare.

Broadcast (Synchronous Learner Engagement) 

The use cases in the previous sections make use of what PlayPosit refers to as its “core platform”, however, our license includes additional features. One of these features is “Broadcast“, PlayPosit’s audience response system. Unlike the core platform, Broadcast is used in synchronous learning environments.  

Broadcast allows instructors to push interactive learning content (quiz questions, polls, etc.) to both in-person and remote synchronous learners’ personal devices for real-time engagement and feedback. You can learn more about using Broadcast in this PlayPosit guide. 

The PlayPosit player before launching a Broadcast bulb as a student.
Like regular, graded PlayPosit bulbs, students will launch PlayPosit broadcasts through a Canvas assignment. Image credit: PlayPosit.

Potential Use Cases

Julie Wondergem in Chemistry has used the Broadcast feature to send out multiple choice questions during her lectures to check student understanding and increase engagement. Students are allowed to work together and the questions are only a half-point each, keeping the task low-stakes while still rewarding students for engagement and attentiveness.
Students are often hesitant to raise their hand and ask for something to be repeated, a certain problem or concept be reviewed, or request that the instructor move more slowly. Polls or free-response questions can be used to gauge how students are doing during class while keeping their responses anonymous to their peers.

Learner-Made Content

All of the examples up until this point have focused on instructor-made content, but did you know that you can have students create bulbs too? PlayPosit refers to bulbs, interactions, and other content made by students as “learner made content“, and student-created bulbs as “learner made bulbs ” (LMBs).  

You can either have students select their own video for creating a bulb or provide them with a video link to use. In the latter scenario, students will add their own annotations or interactions to demonstrate their understanding of the video’s content. Another nice feature of learner-made bulbs is that the instructor can leave timestamped feedback on students’ bulbs. This could be particularly useful for student presentations, instrumental or vocal performances, or other activities that you would like students to record for assessment. You can learn more about creating assignments for learner-made bulbs in this PlayPosit guide. 

Learner-made content assignment in Canvas from a student perspective.
The image above is what a student will see in Canvas when they click on a learner-made content assignment. Clicking “Start” will launch the PlayPosit bulb designer. Image credit: PlayPosit.

Potential Use Cases

Some fields like nursing or counseling require a lot of instructor observation, which can prove challenging in distance learning environments. One nursing instructor was able to simulate one-on-one, face-to-face observation by having her students record their activities and then create PlayPosit bulbs out of the videos. The instructor could then provide timestamped feedback and supply additional resources if needed (images, links, etc.). Another instructor in counseling has her students use learner-made content in a very similar way.

When you create a learner-made content assignment, you can provide a video link for your students to use. The students’ task then is to add interactions or annotations based on your guidelines in the instructions. For example, perhaps you find a YouTube video of a lab experiment. The instructions might ask students to add this video to their bulb and then add timestamped annotations identifying and describing the steps of the scientific process as they occur in the video.

Peer Review

Peer review builds on the previous feature, learner-made content. Like a regular peer review Canvas assignment, students first submit their own video to the PlayPosit peer review assignment and are then assigned peers’ video submissions to review and leave feedback.  

One useful aspect of this tool is that student reviewers leave their feedback as discussion comments that are each timestamped to indicate the exact moment of the video when the reviewer paused and entered the comment. Instructors may additionally create a rubric for student reviewers to complete. You may also appreciate that PlayPosit requires reviewers to watch the video in full before submitting their review. As the instructor, you can view both the learner videos and the feedback left by other students and assign grades accordingly. Learn more about peer review in this PlayPosit guide. 

Peer Review assignment in Canvas. Students can toggle between tabs to give feedback, view (peer) feedback, and view instructor feedback, as well as see their own bulb and assigned bulbs.
After a student has submitted their own video, they will be able to see which students they have been assigned to for peer review, leave feedback for submitted videos, and view their own feedback from peers or the instructor. Image credit: PlayPosit.

Potential Use Cases

Students will be assigned certain videos to view, which they can then leave timestamped feedback for. You can set the perimeters of the assignment to control what kind of feedback is provided. For example, do you want students to leave questions about the presentation content on their peers’ videos? Do you wish for them to critique or correct the information presented? Or are they assessing their peers’ presentation and public speaking skills?
Similar to the nursing and counseling scenarios described above in the learner-made content section, you can also have students record their activities and create a video for peer review. This could be useful for peer observation activities in courses where in-person observation is not feasible. The video format allows students to see their peers’ skills across time and space, while the PlayPosit player allows them to leave timestamped feedback and fill out a rubric created by the instructor.

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. 

 

PlayPosit Introduction and Overview

A blue, white, and black logo with a Dachshund dog and the word "PlayPosit"

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 attentiveness of 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.

The first tab of the PlayPosit bulb video builder, "Video Source." The dropdown menu is set to "Kaltura" and underneath are the first two video listings from a Kaltura video gallery
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.

The PlayPosit video player; on the left is a menu bar, and on the bottom a playback bar. In the middle there is the video and a pop-up menu with a true or false question.
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.

The "submission type" dropdown menu and settings in a Canvas assignment
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.).

A Canvas module titled "PlayPosit Demo Jan 22" with an external link item underneath labelled "Stopping a Kaltura Classroom Stream Early"
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.

The menu for inserting an interaction in PlayPosit. Questions: multiple choice, check all, free response, fill in the blank, poll, discussion. Annotations: pause, web embed. Templates: my interactions, vocabulary matching. At the bottom is a button that says "more options below."
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
The grading view in PlayPosit. At the top is the question and the student's response. Below that is a bar to select the number of points to award, and a text box for entering feedback. At the very bottom is a "Submit" button.
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.