Last week the TUC Provost e-mailed me a copy of an article entitled “Raising the Bar for Academic Video.” What I found most interesting about this article was that it described the process that one should take when working with an instructional designer to create an instructional video. However, I would argue that faculty should undertake this process whenever they are creating any instructional video – regardless if it is a five minute screencasting video or a full production video in the green room. Any time you are creating an instructional video, be sure to think about what you want to achieve with the video; decide if there are ways to cut the topic into multiple, shorter videos; have an outline prepared before you start recording; carefully consider the visuals (e.g., slides, the screen, whether you’ll have a video of yourself included in the video, etc.); don’t just record the video, but be sure to do some editing too; and make sure to upload it into Kaltura instead of as a file in Canvas.
I actually received the article the day before I noticed that Valencia College Faculty and Instructional Development had posted this series of videos:
- Kaltura Capture Overview – a video that outlines how to access Kaltura inside of Canvas in order to create instructional videos, how to download the new Kaltura Capture client, how to create a screencast using Kaltura Capture, and how to upload a video to Kaltura inside of Canvas
- note that I created an instructional video that just shows just how to upload an existing video to Kaltura inside of Canvas at https://youtu.be/PJfV_viRZk4
- Requesting Captions in Kaltura – a video that outlines how to request any video uploaded toKaltura inside of Canvas is closed captioned
- Editing Captions in Kaltura – a video that outlines how to edit the closed captioning that you receive from Kaltura inside of Canvas
Now one of the good things about Kaltura is that videos that uploaded to Kaltura inside of Canvas do not count against the Canvas file size quota. Another nice thing is that if you do take the time to request the captions from Kaltura, the company claims that their captioning meets the requirements of both Section 504 of Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Title II of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA).
By the way, I should have stated up front that Valencia College Faculty and Instructional Development has some great Canvas instructional videos in general.
As always, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me.
Michael K. Barbour, Ph.D.
Fellow