I discovered recently how easy it is to create a video from a slideshow within PowerPoint, and even include narration. This may not be the newest technology, but it is definitely a very quick and simple way to produce a high quality MP4 video that can be uploaded to Talon or YouTube.

FAQs:

  • No other software needed besides PowerPoint.
  • Every action you take in PowerPoint can be captured in the recording. This includes timing of slide advance, animations & transitions, mouse or laser movement, pen or highlighting, and narration.
  • Recordings may be exported as an MP4 file (or WMV).
  • Captions may be added after uploading to YouTube.
  • To see an example of a video created using this process, see this Kirkwood Community College Library video.

Tutorial:

Brief step by step:

  1. Create your PowerPoint as usual & save
  2. Use Slide Show menu to Record Slide Show
    1. Be prepared with narration
  3. Save again, or “Save As” to retain copy of original PowerPoint
  4. File -> Export -> Create a Video
    1. Medium quality for most purposes
    2. Save as MP4
  5. Upload to YouTube if captions are needed
    1. Detailed directions for this can be found in the tutorial above

Detailed directions with troubleshooting:

These sites from Microsoft have excellent step-by-step directions, with specific directions based on which version of PowerPoint you’re using.

Microsoft help: Record Slide Show

Microsoft help: Export recorded slide show as video

Capture

More and more faculty now use interactive homework and study sites as required add-ons to their textbooks. At the Library service desk in Iowa City (and I’m sure at the computer lab help desk at the Cedar Rapids campus) we help students daily to troubleshoot problems with sites like MyPearson and other similar sites from the major textbook publishers, so I know that they are heavily used. So it was only a matter of time before some clever and creative people got together and created a comparable service for OER or Open Textbooks.

David Wiley, OER pioneer and avid supporter, and his people at Lumen Learning have created just such a set of services, called Waymaker, Candela, or OHM, (depending on the type that works with your discipline or course). I was curious to see just how these worked so I scheduled a Zoom meeting demo of them last week with one of their reps. These have the same kinds of functions you’d expect in online courseware: easy access to textbooks chapters, assignments, study support, quizzes, videos, and much more. I know faculty will each have their own unique questions about it, but here are some Q’s & A’s to get you started:

What textbooks or courses are available in this system?

 

The complete Lumen Learning course catalog is here. Some textbooks have only Candela available, and some have Waymaker too.

What is the difference between the three different services?

  • Candela is the most basic, with the textbook, interactive content, video, and the like. The cost is $10 per student, per semester.
  • Waymaker is the next step up, with everything Candela offers, plus personalized study plans, easier communication and connection, and more faculty tools for assessment. The cost is $25 per student, per semester.
  • OHM is courseware specifically for courses in mathematics and other quantitative courses. It’s a complete homework system with lots of feedback for students, plus faculty tools. The cost is $25 per student, per semester.

If this is an OER, why is there a cost?

All the courses listed in the Lumen Learning catalog are indeed open — they are free to use, to adapt, and to print or otherwise distribute to students. I encourage you to take a look, you may find that the free text is all you need for your students. (Yay!) It is the added online interactive courseware that has a charge, simply due to the extensive work and technical and educational design specialty needed to produce and upkeep the system. But like OER, most content of the system is customizable by faculty adopters.

Is it compatible with D2L/Brightspace (Talon)?

Yes! You’ll need to get the demo to see it in action, but it’s very slick. The whole content of the textbook as well as all the added features of the the site actually embed into the Talon environment, so it is a very seamless experience for students. Again, I was very impressed, especially after seeing so many students struggle with going to outside sites for their courseware assignments.

I encourage any faculty interested in this system to contact Lumen Learning for a demo, or check out their site for faculty where they outline the support they provide. The rep I talked with was very knowledgeable, and happy to answer all my questions. (And no, they aren’t paying me to promote this, I just think it’s wonderful!)

Many of us use videos as required or supplemental resources for student use in our courses. Emily McWorthy from Kirkwood’s Distance Learning has created a very helpful and thorough guide for faculty with questions about this requirement, and how to ensure all their videos are captioned.

A snippet from her guide: “By law, all course videos must have closed captioning available for students.  Closed Captioning benefits all students, not just students with disabilities.  This packet contains instructions for closed captioning videos in different scenarios.

“All videos, even supplementary videos, are required to have closed captioning to provide an equal experience for all students.  This includes videos for online and face-to-face courses.  This also includes videos created for other faculty and staff members.”

Great information to know! To read the whole guide, find it posted on this blog, on our “Ed Tech Resources” page.

[Kate H.]

This past year I’ve been part of a group from Library Services creating a pilot project that will create tutorials for faculty to embed in their Talon courses. After the first round of faculty and student testing of our first module (on Plagiarism), we heard from our pilot-ers, “We like the content, but can you make it more interactive?” This created the perfect opportunity to jump into my new role as a tech scout and investigate the possibilities. I thought, there just has to be a good tool out there that won’t take hours to learn, will interact nicely with existing video content on YouTube, and also embed into Talon/D2L.

I read lots of reviews, and tried out a few different options. Office Mix, a free PowerPoint add-in, was one promising program that I ended up not really getting to try out because I ran into technical issues loading it onto my office computer. Since then tech scout Kristie Murdoch has reviewed here on the blog! I also tried out EdPuzzle, and although it looks like an interesting tool, it wasn’t what I was looking for.

PlayPosit is the tool I decided to give a full trial. Basically, I wanted a way to take an existing video and embed within it questions or activities to engage the students watching the video in paying active attention to the content, and also processing the content rather than just passively taking it in.

playposit

PlayPosit video edit interface

 

PlayPosit is completely web-based, and has a nice simple interface. Once you log in you can immediately start creating interactive content based on an existing video. For my needs, I had videos I had already created and uploaded to YouTube, so I was ready to roll. I simply pasted in the URL of my video, and it showed up in the PlayPosit editing screen.

 

From here I began adding questions, placing them at the exact place in the video where I wanted students to pause and reflect, or check

playposit2

PlayPosit “add question” interface

their understanding of the previous content. When students are watch my saved video, it will automatically pause at these points, and won’t continue until they have answered the question.

PlayPosit also has copyright agreements with YouTube and Vimeo that allow PlayPosit users to pull videos from these platforms, crop content if desired, and add interactive question elements. For more information see PlayPosit’s copyright FAQ. Once your PlayPosit interactive video is saved, you will have a couple different options for how to share it, through a link open to all, or through a link just for your students who have their own PlayPosit account (if you want to save their answers for grading).

I found PlayPosit to be very easy to use, with just very basic features, but those features being the ones I was looking for! This is perfect for those videos that you find on YouTube and would like to share with students, except that you only want certain chunks of it and don’t want to get permission from the owner, make a copy, do your edits, and reshare somewhere else. PlayPosit streamlines this and adds in the question features too. This is a great tool, and I highly recommend. (By the way, I tested the free version. The paid version has more question features.)

Give it a try, and let us all know what you think!