Tag: OCA

Do more with video: Four great features of the new Kaltura

Ari Crossby

Kaltura (Langara’s multimedia streaming platform) is about to be upgraded. As well as continuing to provide an easily accessible way for instructors and students to upload video and audio content to D2L courses, Kaltura is introducing a number of new features. Here we highlight four that we are excited about – and we hope you will be too.

1. Kaltura MediaSpace

It has always been possible to upload videos to Kaltura in D2L. However, instructors have been asking us for a while whether there is a more user-friendly and visually appealing way to search, watch, upload and share their videos. Kaltura MediaSpace will bring a YouTube-like video portal to Langara with granular user controls over the management of videos, screencasts, audio and other content, including student content. All data is stored in Canada on UBC’s servers and all content uploaded to MediaSpace is private by default.

MediaSpace at Michigan State U

2. Closed Captioning

The Canadian Association of the Deaf have long advocated for the high quality captioning of all video for accessibility purposes. Closed captions in Kaltura are not a new feature – they have been available for a while. The upgraded version enables all users to upload SRT and other closed caption files rather than have Ed Tech do this for you. We are also currently evaluating the use of external video captioning services that integrate with Kaltura.

3. CaptureSpace

At Langara ‘Video Screen Capture’ (i.e Screencasting) is very popular with instructors who use it for a variety of purposes – whether that be providing audio and visual feedback on papers to students in the LEAP program, assisting a flipped classroom model or creating software walk-throughs. Up to now we have recommended and supported instructors in the use of a tool called Screencast-o-matic that we subscribe to for creating video screen captures. The upgraded version of Kaltura brings a new application called CaptureSpace that will be available to download for Windows and Mac computers. CaptureSpace allows you to capture your screen, screen and webcam, webcam only or voice. It also integrates nicely with Microsoft Powerpoint so allows instructors (and students) to easily create slides with narration.

Quizzing in Kaltura

4. Interactive Video Quizzing

Have we saved the best until last? The interactive video quizzing feature in the new Kaltura enables the embedding of multi-choice questions at any point in a video. This is a great way to improve engagement, interactivity and assess understanding. This feature will be available later in the year.

For more information on the Kaltura upgrade please contact Julian, Heidi or Ari in Ed Tech (edtech@langara.ca).

Reading Round Up

Ari Crossby
Here’s what we have been reading lately in EdTech:

The Death of the Digital Native

In these four provocations, anthropologist Donna Lanclos argues that the notion of the “digital native” is bogus and disempowering, that pandering to student expectations can backfire, universities should be open by default, and our attitude to educational technology needs a rethink.

Five Types of Quizzes That Deepen Engagement with Course Content

a Faculty Focus article offering innovative ways to set quizzes.

Open Source Math Software Competes in the Classroom

William Stein is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Washington,and  founder of the SageMath software project discusses the software’s advantages

The Digital Campus: Tech Innovators 2016

Digital movers and shakers—nine projects using educational technology

Want to share an article you enjoyed? Please post a link in the comments below.

 Computer keyboard atop which a pair of reading glasses

 

 

 

Creative Commons Workshop at KPU: A conversation with Paul Stacey

Ari Crossby

As part of Open Education week, I recently attended a workshop at Kwantlen Polytechnic University with Paul Stacey, Associate Director of Global Learning at the non-profit organization Creative Commons. Previously at SFU and BC Campus, Paul has been instrumental in driving the adoption of OER (Open Educational Resources) in the BC post-secondary sector.

Rather than give a traditional presentation, Paul adopted a more informal question and answer session with approximately thirty workshop participants. He started by explaining what Creative Commons licenses are and stressed they are still a form of copyright attached to a creative work. The difference between “all rights reserved” copyright and Creative Commons licenses is that under the latter the author stipulates a set of permissions so that others can use a creative work in certain ways under certain conditions. Unlike “all rights reserved” copyright, Creative Commons licenses are “some rights reserved:” they allow creativity while ensuring the author retains ownership rights over the work.

The licenses themselves are best thought of as being on a ‘permissiveness’ continuum from the most permissive and open (Public Domain marks and CC BY – Attribution) through to the least permissive (CC BY NC ND). Paul, along with organisations like JISC, advocates for the use of CC BY wherever possible. The different licenses themselves are explained very well on the Creative Commons website. There is also a great License Chooser Tool if you are unsure which license to use. Although earlier versions of CC licenses were country/region specific, the new version 4.0 can be applied globally regardless of geographical location.

CCpermissiveness

Paul went on to demonstrate some real-world examples of the licenses in practice. The Librivox Free Audiobook Collection provides free audio recordings of books in the public domain. Similarly German-Japanese pianist Kimiko Ishizaka’s interpretation of Bach’s Open Goldberg Variations has been made available under a CC0 (zero) Public Domain license, meaning that any use can be made of the work without even the need for attribution. CC BY (Attribution) licenses are used by the OpenStax Textbook project and CC BY SA (Attribution, Share-alike) is used by Wikipedia. The board game Cards Against Humanity uses CC BY NC SA, online journal The Conversation uses CC BY ND and an example of the least permissive CC BY NC ND license is provided by the Teach AIDS website.

Openly licensing educational content has many benefits. Paul mentioned some of the more obvious ones such as the cost-savings to students of faculty adopting an open textbook, or the higher quality resources resulting from a collaborative peer authoring and review process. Beyond this, however, it is important to remember the core values of education that open educational practices support. Sharing and building on the ideas of others is fundamental to public education, as are academic freedom and innovation in teaching practice. Open textbooks, for example, increase academic freedom by taking control away from publishers and putting the potential to re-purpose and re-mix directly in the hands of faculty and students. Think, for example, of the exciting opportunities that exist to adapt textbooks for local contexts and update the content more regularly than traditional textbooks. Or think of the pedagogical innovations that might occur when we invite students to co-produce a classroom text?

Finally, Paul covered some important considerations when starting out with OER and open textbooks at an institution. Make sure you adopt a bottom-up as well as top-down approach, i.e get both senior management and faculty/student buy-in. Have a look around to see what exists already – at Langara, for example, we already have faculty in Physics and Math using open textbooks with their students; we’re not starting from scratch. Think about how OER will be stored, curated and distributed/shared. And have a clear institutional strategy that involves as many internal stakeholders as possible, while taking advantage of the ever-expanding wealth of resources and networks that are available in the open education space.

Julian Prior (Educational Technology Advisor)