Assignment Submission for Brightspace

With this release of Mediasite, video-based assignments have come to the Brightspace LMS. Video assignments have been available within Moodle for some time and they open the door to have students utilizing Mediasite. Once this is enabled within the LMS, instructors will have the option to create an assignment that will require students to submit a video. That means there are three aspects to complete a video-based assignment.

1. Creating the assignment
2. Submitting the assignment
3. Grading the Assignment

Creating a Video Assignment in Brightspace (Instructor)

The first step in using the video-based assignment submission is on the instructor. As an instructor you’ll need to create the assignment following the typical workflow with a few minor variations.

1. Navigate to the course within the LMS and select a module to create the assignment.

2. Click the New drop-down and select New Assignment from the list.

3. Give the assignment a title, select individual assignment, and enter any instructions.

4. For students to submit a video, the Submission Type must be Text Submission.

5. Save the assignment.

Submitting the Assignment (Students)

When a text-based assignment is created, students will have the option to submit a Mediasite video using the Insert Stuff button.

1. Locate and open the assignment within the course and module in the LMS.

2. Click the Insert Stuff button on the Text Editor toolbar.

3. Choose the Mediasite icon from the list.

4. Select Presentation if the video has already been added to My Mediasite or Upload to add a new video to My Mediasite.

5. Within My Mediasite continue to upload a new video or select the desired video to submit in the assignment.

6. From the My Mediasite Presentation Details Page, click Add Presentation to Course and select from the four options.

7. Back in Brightspace, click Insert to add the video to the assignment submission.

8. Click Submit to Assignments to complete the assignment.

Grading the Assignment (Instructors)

Once the assignment has been submitted by students it will require grading. The grades can be completed directly within the LMS. Instructors will follow the same procedure to grade a video-based assignment that would be followed for any other assignment. The difference is that instructors should watch the submitted prior to administering a grade.

Moodle Direct Upload

Traditionally, a video has needed to exist within My Mediasite before it could be added to a course within the LMS. However, recent updates have seen the functionality to upload a video and add it to the LMS all within a single step. This feature, which has already been added to

Within the desired course the first step to take is ensure editing is turned on.

1. Click Add an Activity or resource then choose Mediasite Content.

2. There will be a new button for Upload under Upload New Media.

3. My Mediasite will open to the Add Media page where you will be able to upload a video or do a new Desktop Recording.

4. Once the Presentation has uploaded or been recorded, Click Add Presentation to Course and select the desired option.

My Mediasite Adaptive Bitrate

Having adaptive bitrate on content has its pros and cons. While it is great for viewers that may not have the necessary bandwidth to stream a presentation at high qualities it also adds to the content storage needs on your server. The adaptive bitrate content has been part of presentations for many years. Since video, especially personally captured content, is becoming more prevalent in many settings, there was a need to add the ability to enable and utilize this adaptive bitrate for that content. With the release, administrators have the ability to have adaptive bitrates created automatically for any uploaded content and or MDR recordings. The other side of this is the ability to remove the adaptive bitrate with actions.

Enable Adaptive Bitrate

Before users can take advantage of adaptive bitrate on their personally captured content it must be enabled in the Management portal by an administrator.

1. Navigate to Settings > Application Settings > My Mediasite
2. Under the Mediasite Desktop Recorder Setting Click Yes to enable
3. Under the Media Upload Settings click Yes to enable

Once enabled, any presentation that is created through My Mediasite upload or MDR will automatically include the adaptive bitrate content.

Remove Adaptive Bitrate with Actions

Since adaptive bitrate does utilize more storage than a standard presentation it is a good idea to include some form of content retention around removing the adaptive bitrate. To streamline the removal, an additional option has been added to actions. This can be performed from either the Management portal or My Mediasite however the image example and instruction are from My Mediasite.

1. From the presentation details page in My Mediasite select Edit Details.
2. Navigate to the Actions Tab and click Schedule New Action.
3. Set when you would like the action to occur.
4. Under Action Type choose Remove Adaptive Bitrate.
5. Click Update Action.

Once the action has been added to the presentation it will be displayed along with any additional actions. Click save to complete adding the action to the presentation. Once the desired time frame or date has occurred, the action will be carried out automatically.

Move and Copy

This release of Mediasite includes minor updates to how moving and copying presentations is handled from the security side of things. With this update, the Administrator can set how security and actions will be handled on the presentation that is getting moved or copied.

The setting to change is found in the management portal by going to Settings > Server Settings > Site Information.

There are two new fields:

• Permissions on Copy/Move Presentation
• Scheduled Actions on Copy/Move Presentation

Each of the fields has the three similar options that determine what will happen when a user attempts to move or copy a presentation:

1. Ask user whether to keep permissions/actions
   • The users will be prompted when moving the presentation to choose whether the permissions/actions should remain as is or match the destination folder.
2. Keep permissions/actions from source presentation
   • By default, the presentation permissions/actions will remain as is. This is how permissions and actions have typically been handled within Mediasite.
3. Inherit permissions from parent folder
   • The presentation permissions will be changed to match the folder it is being moved/copied to.
4. Do not keep scheduled actions from source presentation
   • Any actions that have not been completed will be removed once the presentation is moved/copied.

When “Ask user whether to keep permissions/actions” is set, the user will have the option to choose what will happen when moving/copying a presentation. Regardless of whether the action is taken within the Management Portal or My Mediasite, the user will have two options.

1. Keep permissions/scheduled actions from source presentation
   • The permissions or scheduled actions on the presentation will not change when the presentation is moved/copied.
2. Inherit permissions from parent folder
   • The presentation permissions will match the destination folder.
3. Do not keep scheduled actions from source presentation
   • Any uncompleted actions will be removed from the presentation.

Caption Editor: Find and Replace

Mediasite has continued efforts to improve the accessibility and captioning of videos. In this latest update, a find and replace feature has been added to the caption editor in My Mediasite. This feature works similar to familiar tools in other applications. What you will find on the caption editor are two additional tabs, Find and Replace.

On the Find tab you can enter a search term and the results will display in the list below.

On the Replace tab, you can still enter the initial search term. In the above example the captions are incorrect with Mediasite as two words. You would then be able to enter the correct word and click Replace All to correct the results.

Show Shortcuts

Mediasite content that needs deletion has been challenging when the presentation contains published shortcuts within multiple folders, channels, catalogs or showcase.

In this release a new feature has been added to improve the workflow around deleting content with potentially multiple shortcuts. Rather than searching for and locating each shortcut individually, everything can be found at the root presentations. On the Publish tab of a presentation in the Management portal an additional field has been added for Presentation Shortcuts.

This will list all the shortcuts for the presentation, if any exist. From this point you would be able to navigate directly to and delete the shortcuts prior to deleting the root presentation. While this improvement still requires you to delete the shortcuts individually, they are centrally located where you can access them easily without searching.

Convert Multiple Catalogs to Channels

A continuing trend with Mediasite is the movement from catalogs, as the standard collection of content, to Channels. The benefits of using channels are numerous including increased engagement and modern features. This update to Mediasite may not include any updates or improvements to channels themselves but there is a small update that improves the workflow to transition currently used catalogs to Channels. Within the Management portal you will now be able to select multiple catalogs and have them converted to Channels.

In order to convert several catalogs to channels:

1. Navigate to Publishing > Catalogs in the Management portal
2. Select the desired catalogs to convert.
3. Click the More drop-down and choose Convert to Mediasite Channel.
4. Click OK to confirm. Once a converted to a channel it cannot be undone.
5. Select Channels in the left-hand navigation pane to confirm the catalog converted successfully.

Force Delete Recorders

One last update that impacts maintaining your Mediasite System is around the deletion of recorders. When a recorder is deleted from the system you can now force delete even if the recorder contains dependencies such as schedules. This will streamline deleting recorders from your systems however there are several points to be aware of when removing a recorder.

1. Deleting a recorder will bypass the recycling bin. This means that the recorder cannot be recovered.
2. Any recorder dependencies i.e. schedules will also be deleted. These will follow the recorder deletion and bypass the recycling bin. Once the recorder and schedules are deleted, they cannot be recovered.
3. To delete the recorder and dependencies there will be an additional confirmation step where you will need to enter the word ‘delete’.