Teaching Virtually: Multimedia: Creating and Posting

Recording Class Sessions

It's a good idea to record your live synchronous sessions so students can review or catch up on anything they missed. See the Zoom tab of this guide for more instructions, and visit Zoom's own help page for additional information.

Creating Content with Zoom

It's also very easy to create instructional videos with Zoom. Simply create a meeting with no invitees, share your slides or other content with the Screen Share tool, and record the "meeting" to create the lecture video.

Recording with Zoom: Tips

• Remember to record locally, rather than to the cloud - this will ensure you keep the copy of your video.
• When recording screen-shared content, your webcam thumbnail will always be in the top right - make sure no important content will be covered in the video.
• After your recordings have processed, rename the videos right away to keep them organized for yourself.
• Consider uploading audio-only versions of class sessions or lectures when they don't depend on visual content - students can consume these more easily. The folder containing the recorded video will also contain an .m4a audio file, which you can upload to Blackboard or elsewhere.

Getting Started with Techsmith Knowmia

Knowmia (formerly Relay) is our video hosting service. Visit grcc.techsmithrelay.com to create your account or sign in. View this video for more information on logging in, navigating the Knowmia interface, and recording and uploading with the Knowmia tools.

Why Knowmia?

Knowmia offers several benefits over YouTube or direct-hosted videos in Blackboard. These include:

• Student analytics, so you can see which students have watched your video (and how much of the video they've watched)
• Built-in quizzing and conversations tools
• Auto-generated captioning
• Basic editing and trimming tools
• Blackboard integration through the Knowmia LTI

Tutorials

Techsmith offers a wealth of tutorials for important Knowmia functions. Visit their help page for more information, or email us at DLIT@grcc.edu with any questions.

Sharing Media

We do not recommend uploading videos directly to your Blackboard course, as course storage is limited to around 500 MB. This can fill up quickly, even with just a few videos. Instead, upload your videos to YouTube or Knowmia and share that way.

Uploading to YouTube

If you have local videos you want to upload, YouTube is a good option. Your GRCC account will work as a YouTube account, so simply sign in and follow the instructions in this video to create a channel:

To share your YouTube videos in Blackboard, post the links as content items or use the Mashups feature to embed them in content areas.

Sharing with the Knowmia LTI

If you record or upload videos to Knowmia, we recommend using the Knowmia LTI to post your videos in Blackboard. To do so:

• Navigate to the content area where you want to post a video. Select the Tools dropdown (not Build Content) and choose TechSmith Knowmia (formerly known as TechSmith Relay).

(click to enlarge screenshot)

• At the content creation screen, give the video its title ("Week 1 Lecture," what have you) and Submit. Note that we haven't attached the video yet - that's next.
• Back at the content area, the video title you just wrote will be a link. Click on that link and the LTI will launch, showing you your list of videos in Knowmia. Click the "Add Media" button on the video you want to attach, then use the breadcrumb trail (see screenshot) to go back to the content area. (Don't use the browser back button or the video might unlink itself).

(click to enlarge screenshot)

For a walkthrough of this process, see this video: