Kaltura: Overview
Kaltura: An Overview
Kaltura is a video streaming tool integrated with Canvas, and among its features are: My Media, Media Gallery and KalturaCapture. Kaltura can be used to easily insert media content all over your Canvas course.
Three Main Features
- My Media provides a collection of any media content you have uploaded to Canvas, regardless of which course page you are on it is the same. Students and instructors all have their own My Media pages. The content uploaded to My Media is only visible to you.
- The Media Gallery is specific to each course. You can select content from My Media to publish on the course page. All students in the course will be able to see content you publish to the Media Gallery.
- KalturaCapture is a downloadable application which allows you to record video, audio, and share your screen. This application allows for quick creation of videos and is handy for creating recorded lectures.
Kaltura is especially useful because it allows you to post your media in many Canvas areas. Anywhere you see the Rich Content Editor (RCE), shown below, you can embed your media by clicking on the Kaltura Icon.
Clicking on the Kaltura icon will allow you to directly embed existing media content from My Media and the Media Gallery, or to create new media content.
Additional Kaltura Features and Tools
- The Kaltura Editor provides simple editing tools for any media uploaded to My Media. The editor allows you to trim, chop, and splice and clip their videos.
- Interactive Quizzes can be embedded into your video at any point. These can be multiple choice, true or false, or just a momentary pause with text for reflection. Users also have the ability to link the quizzes to the Canvas
- Hotspots are another feature that can make your videos more engaging. At any point in the video, you can add a hotspot which might link to a previous video, lecture notes, a URL, or some other time in the
Kaltura Accessibility
- Kaltura supports screen readers.
- Mechanical captions can be ordered for free, or for a fee human-edited captions can be ordered. (The user can also edit captions).
- Option to add Alt text to images uploaded.
- Supports keyboard shortcut controls.
- More about Kaltura accessibility: https://corp.kaltura.com/products/video-accessibility/ Links to an external site.
Kaltura Best Practices
- When recording video use an external microphone for best quality audio.
- Consider recording your lecture in smaller segments (as opposed to the usual 50-80 min length). Watching videos is very passive, breaking it up make it easier to for students to stay engaged.
- Use descriptive titles for media uploaded.
- Turn off notifications on your computer.
- Use interactive quizzes or hotspots (or both!) to make your content more engaging.
- Note: Due to the level of integration between Canvas and Kaltura, the “Student View” in Canvas does NOT show media uploaded with Kaltura. Do not worry, it is there and students will be able to see any content which has been published.
To learn more about Kaltura, contact ctl.helpdesk@ubc.ca.
UBC Okanagan Centre for Teaching and Learning Kaltura Directory
Updated July 2020