Introduction to This Blog Series
Few aspects of teaching are as vital to your course’s success as classroom trust. For your students to remain engaged with your subject matter, they need to know that you see them as people and that you’re genuinely invested in their success. This connection between you and your students doesn’t come automatically – it needs to be cultivated with care at every step of your course.
In this and following installments, we’ll suggest ways in which technologies available at UChicago can support you as you work toward meaningful classroom community. Certainly, no single technology or combination of technologies can create a sense of community by themselves – human effort is always vital. Yet through judicious application of technologies with the human element firmly in mind, you can smooth the path toward community, helping to make the course more meaningful for you and your students alike.
Video Announcements as a Trust-Building Method
Many faculty and instructors, in both synchronous and asynchronous courses, leverage Canvas Announcements as an effective means of communicating with their students. Even a quick, basic text announcement helps your students know that you’re paying attention to their needs and working toward their success. But you can go farther. A video announcement gives you room to convey body language, tone of voice, and all the other communicative aspects that text alone doesn’t allow for. This, in turn, lets your students get a sense of you as a person, not simply a face concealed behind a computer screen.
You’re also free, if you so choose, to arrange your background in a way that conveys who you are. Even something as simple as a pennant for a sports team or a favorite work of art hanging on your wall tells your students something about you. This “humanization,” simple though it may seem, can be remarkably effective in letting your students know they don’t need to be intimidated by you and can reach out for help when they need it.
Also, it’s worth remembering that announcements, video or otherwise, don’t have to be restricted to sharing information (a canceled class, an additional reading, etc.) You can use announcements as a form of encouragement, letting students know, for example, that you’re rooting for them and ready to answer their questions before a major exam, paper, or presentation is due. It’s even possible to schedule announcements in advance (see “Set Display Dates” in the article How do I add an announcement in a course?), so that they go live at key junctures in your course. Scheduled announcements can help guide your students through the course and keep them engaged (especially late in the quarter, when fatigue on everyone’s part may cause enthusiasm to flag).
Sample Video Announcement
Create an Accessible Video Announcement with Panopto and Canvas
Should you choose to go the video announcement route, we recommend as a best practice that you record your announcement in Panopto and then embed it in your Canvas announcement. This is due to accessibility requirements, specifically the need for videos to be closed captioned.
Panopto automatically supplies closed captions for videos. While these automatic captions are not perfect, they are generally accurate enough that only minor manual edits are needed, especially if you speak slowly and clearly while recording. Canvas’s native video recorder, on the other hand, does not support automatic captioning – it requires you to upload a timestamped caption file manually for each video.
The simplest way to add a Panopto video to an announcement, or anywhere else in Canvas where the Rich Content Editor (RCE) appears, is to click on the Panopto icon in the RCE toolbar. The steps for embedding a Panopto video in this way are outlined in Panopto’s documentation on embedding videos in Canvas. Alternatively, you can embed the video directly into your announcement by following the steps below.
- Record your Panopto video. Note that, depending on the length of the video, it may take up to an hour for Panopto to generate closed captions.
- Manually review the closed captions and make any corrections needed.
- Once the closed captions are correct, choose Share and then click Embed.
- Click Copy Embed Code. (Note: For the purposes of accessibility, please do not select Autoplay. Leave it unchecked. Autoplay videos can be confusing and distressing for some individuals.)
- Create your Announcement by navigating to Announcements and clicking the maroon Add Announcement button.
- You will now be in the Rich Content Editor. Switch to the HTML editor by clicking on the </> icon at the lower right of the text box.
- Paste the embed code (Ctrl+V in Windows; Cmd + V on Mac) into the HTML editor.
- Return to the text editor by clicking the </> icon again. Your video will now appear in an iframe within the text box.
- Add text, images, etc., if you wish, to the announcement. (You might consider adding a transcript beneath the video for students with hearing impairments, those listening in loud environments, etc.)
- Before publishing, scroll down and click the Pope Tech Checker icon (a stylized P next to the Cancel and Publish buttons). This will identify accessibility issues within your announcement and give you guidance on remediating them. (For more information, please see the Knowledge Base article Enhance the Accessibility of Your Canvas Course with Pope Tech.)
- Click Publish to make the announcement live.
Share Your Classroom Community Stories
We’d like to hear from you! Are you using technology to cultivate a sense of community and trust in your classroom? If so, how’s it going? Please use our Contact Us form and tell us all about it!
(Cover Photo by Grace Brauteseth on Unsplash)
