As the COVID-19 coronavirus and its variants remain a global reality, educational institutions find themselves, again, developing contingency plans to serve quarantined students and to prepare for the possibility of full campus closures. EchoVideo can play a valuable role in your contingency planning by providing a wide range of content creation and management tools, along with student and media engagement data. These tools are already designed to support and track both synchronous and asynchronous online learning, helping you make remote delivery as effective as face-to-face learning.
This guide is designed to provide an outline of actionable steps, along with links to procedural articles and attached quick reference (QRC) PDFs. Rest assured, EchoVideo is ready to support your academic continuity needs, both technologically and organizationally. Use this page to get started. If you need assistance, please reach out to your customer success representative or Echo360 support.
We have also created an article that calls out relevant use cases and real-life examples of institutions implementing EchoVideo's online learning capabilities. These may help you generate ideas on how to provide maximum support and access to course materials for your students. See Using EchoVideo for Remote Learning - Case Studies and Real-Life Examples.
Using EchoVideo to Rapidly Enable Remote Course Delivery
EchoVideo supports both synchronous and asynchronous learning methods by offering the ability to live stream lectures to remote students, review on-demand viewing data for students, add polling questions to your videos, and embed the interactive media directly into your LMS / VLE course pages. Any one or combination of these capabilities can help you quickly transition to a mostly or fully online environment.
Here are some specific things you can do to be ready to teach remote students using EchoVideo:
Create Discrete Video Learning Objects
Video content is a crucial component of online courses. One of the best practices for using video content in an online course is to keep videos short so that they cover a single topic or a related set of topics. Multiple large-scale studies recommend that video length be between 6 and 15 minutes to maximize student focus, engagement, and learning.
Trim videos into shorter segments - You can trim longer videos down to single topics and save as, turning what was previously a single longer video into multiple shorter videos with targeted topics.
Create your own recordings - You can use EchoVideo’s Universal Capture tool to create your own recordings on your laptop or computer. Universal Capture makes it easy to capture your computer screen, along with any connected camera (or the integrated camera on your laptop), to produce effective videos from anywhere. (UC Personal QRC PDF download)
Make the media available to students - Publish your new videos into the EchoVideo course, embed them into your LMS / VLE course pages, and / or add polling questions to the videos to keep students engaged and on track. Both the EchoVideo classroom and LMS / VLE embeds provide a discussion panel for students and instructors to engage with each other about the material.
Replace outdated segments of existing videos with newer recordings - The EchoVideo video editor allows you to remove one or more segments of a video and replace it with a different video. The replacement can be something you have pulled from another source and uploaded to EchoVideo, or it can be a Universal Capture recording you have made yourself.
Edit old videos for reuse - EchoVideo’s video editor lets you make changes to an existing video to meet current needs, then save it as a new piece of media, so the original remains unchanged.
Embed questions into your videos
One way to ensure your students are actively engaging with your materials is to embed questions about the video directly into the video itself. This can also eliminate the need to provide a separate presentation file strictly for polling question responses, especially if the presentation is already being shown in the lecture recording.
Embedded questions or polls in your EchoVideo recording gates playback for students until they have responded. This helps you ensure that students are viewing your course materials and provides you a way to assess student learning. See the below section on engagement and media analytics to learn how to review media viewing data and polling responses for interactive media.
Embedding questions into the video can help refresh previous lectures you may be reusing. It is important to know though; you must edit the video first and then embed your polls. So, use the EchoVideo video editor to make any changes to the previous course lectures, Save As a new item (so the existing recording remains the same), and then embed polling questions in the new media as you want.
You can embed polls into any video (or audio) media you have: EchoVideo class recordings, Universal Capture: Personal recordings, uploaded videos, even Zoom or MS Teams recordings. If the media resides in your EchoVideo Library, you can add polling questions to it. EchoVideo’s separate polling editor enables the creation of customized questions for different courses, allowing you to quickly create more than one version of your video.
Videos with polls embedded in them are called interactive media and can be published to a class in your EchoVideo course, or can be embedded directly into a page of your LMS / VLE course. Both the EchoVideo classroom and LMS / VLE embeds provide a discussion panel for students and instructors to discuss and ask questions about the material.
Live Stream Your Classes
In the event of a campus closure or if you need to reach students who cannot come to campus, you can live-stream your class. By streaming your classes with EchoVideo, students can participate fully in live classes, including asking and answering questions, taking notes, flagging and bookmarking content, and answering polling slides.
EchoVideo’s classroom live attendance feature lets you know who is viewing the stream remotely, and remote student engagement appears in your course analytics, just as it does for students attending in person.
For live streaming from a lecture venue, ask your EchoVideo administrator to update your class capture schedule to provide live streaming of your classes.
You can also live stream using Universal Capture (Classroom or Personal) running on any Mac or PC computer. Simply launch an ad hoc live stream with Universal Capture with the Live Stream checkbox enabled.
In the event of a full campus closure, keep in mind that live streaming alone might not be your best option as students return home to many different time zones and may not have stable internet access. In such cases, providing both live-streamed and on-demand playback of your lectures is likely to be more beneficial for your students.
Build Out Your LMS / VLE Course for Online Learning
These days, nearly every course has an LMS / VLE shell associated with it, and most users access EchoVideo via their LMS / VLE. Frequently, instructors are less experienced in building out video-based learning modules in their LMS / VLE for online courses than they are for face-to-face courses. Providing opportunities for students to interact with instructors, one another, and the course material is an important component of effective online course design. Enabling these interactions and active learning activities within the online environment is supported through multiple tools available within EchoVideo.
For example, instructors can connect with students by creating video announcements using Universal Capture: Personal (QRC PDF download).
Instructors can also create opportunities for interactions with students and student-student interactions by creating secure video assignments and giving video feedback on student assignments.
The below links provide online help articles for assignment tasks:
- Creating Assignments: [Bb], [Canvas], [Moodle]
- Submitting Assignments (Students): [Bb], [Canvas], [Moodle]
The below links provide quick reference PDFs for download:
Providing formative assessments can help you better evaluate whether your students are understanding course material. Video and interactive media (videos with embedded polls) can be integrated directly into any LMS / VLE EchoVideo supports:
- [Bb], [Canvas], [Moodle], [D2L / Brightspace], [Sakai]
Review Engagement, Media Analytics, and Polling Data to Ensure Students Are Involved
EchoVideo enables and tracks all aspects of student interaction with the platform and its materials. We make this tracking available in a variety of ways and locations. We are constantly working to improve instructors' ease of access to this data.
Course Analytics
The most robust set of student engagement data comes from the EchoVideo course analytics. This is because we can take the course classes and the media posted there and combine it with the student interaction with the media and the toolset provided in the EchoVideo classroom.
Numerous faculty and researchers have found that EchoVideo's student engagement score directly correlates with course outcomes. Our Analytics page interface allows you to sort the provided student list by engagement score, and then drill down into specific class data for at-risk students and find out why they may have low engagement scores. Are they viewing the media? Are they participating in discussions? Are they responding to your polling questions? All of this information is available to you.
Specifically, EchoVideo allows you to determine what optimal engagement means for each of your courses. Our Weighting sliders, shown below, let you increase the weight for actions that you think will help students gain from the material (and decrease those you do not). It might be viewing the video media (Video Views), responding to polls (Activities), participating in class discussions (Q&A), or whatever aspects of interaction with the content or other students you determine are most important.
This weighting is used to calculate the Weighted Engagement for each student. And it can be changed as needed, if you find your initial assessment is not indicative of student involvement or success.
Media Analytics
All views of all video and interactive media are tracked and provided in the Analytics tab of the media details page.
The data provided gives overview information, as well as details like who viewed the media, for how long, and where the media view occurred, whether from an EchoVideo course or through an LMS / VLE course page.
The bottom of the analytics tab (not visible above) lists each user who viewed the media along with viewing duration and other data. Furthermore, the data can be filtered by Time Range, to see who has viewed it more recently, and the filtered data can be downloaded to a CSV file for offline review and manipulation.
Interactive Media Polling Responses
If you have interactive media (videos with polling questions embedded), you can view all of the student responses in either of two places, depending on where the media is posted.
Student responses to polls in the media are tracked and provided in the Polling tab of the media details page. For interactive media embedded into an LMS / VLE course page, this is where those student responses will appear for you.
If the interactive media happens to be published in an EchoVideo Course, the responses can also be seen in the Polling tab of the Course. All polls in all media (interactive media or presentations) published to the course are available in the Polling tab for the course.
Using EchoVideo with Zoom or MS Teams
There are teaching scenarios, such as labs or group work, where a video conference may be more appropriate than live streaming or recording a class lecture.
EchoVideo integrates with Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and OneDrive to support their use for creating video content.
Full integration between EchoVideo and Zoom has multiple options that require Administrator actions. They include the ability to launch Zoom meetings from within EchoVideo, automatic ingestion of Zoom meetings into EchoVideo, and Zoom Pro integration with your LMS / VLE for EchoVideo courses. Contact your administrator to ask for these configurations if Zoom is an integral part of your class meetings.
Minimally, however, you can manually download your meetings from Zoom and then upload them into EchoVideo for editing and use, using the tools described earlier on this page.
Full integration between EchoVideo and MS Teams or OneDrive also requires Administrator actions. They can be configured separately if you do not use Teams for your meetings but do use OneDrive for recordings or other class content. Contact your administrator to ask for these configurations if using MS Teams and / or OneDrive is an integral part of your class meetings or generating class media.
And as always, you can manually upload your Teams meetings or other class materials into EchoVideo for editing and use, using the tools described earlier on this page.
EchoVideo Can Scale to Meet Dramatically Increased Usage
EchoVideo proved in 2020 after the first global COVID wave, that the EchoVideo platform can handle the dramatically increased load needed to reach students in quarantined areas, and a move to fully online delivery in the event of campus closures. From its beginning in our Asia-Pacific region, through the multiple waves and variants, we have demonstrated that we can scale without any problems.
The EchoVideo platform was built from the beginning to be a multi-tenant application and our systems are designed to automatically scale as demand increases. We regularly leverage our automation to scale discrete, independent services up and down throughout the day to respond appropriately to changes in traffic and resource demands. Constant testing of our auto-scaling capabilities ensures that when we do see a large increase in demand, we can manage it. If customers schedule live events, EchoVideo will provision sufficient capacity in advance of these scheduled events to ensure that capacity can meet demand.
EchoVideo’s strategic relationship with AWS provides us access to AWS Enterprise Support, a team of expert support and technical resources directly available to our organization. This team is helping us review our current provisioning limits and expedite any changes. They will also monitor our scaling events internally and if any issues do arise, we can work together immediately to resolve them before they affect end users.
Add More Capture and Streaming Venues if Needed
The easiest way to add more capture and streaming capacity at your institution is via EchoVideo Universal Capture software. It runs identically on Mac or Windows computers and can capture two streams of full HD video with audio. Your EchoVideo license provides for unlimited installations of Universal Capture for faculty, students, and administrators. If you have classroom computers available, all you need to do is download, install, and configure them to increase your capture and streaming capacity. You can learn more about configuring Universal Capture in the documentation.
If you prefer hardware capture, EchoVideo can work with you to expand your installation of Pro and Pod devices as needed. Please contact your EchoVideo representative to discuss this.
Other Resources Are Available from EchoVideo to Support Contingency Planning
The entire EchoVideo organization is prepared to support the needs of our clients in an emergency situation and we have been working closely with our clients who are already affected by the current outbreak. If you need any type of support for contingency planning, please contact your EchoVideo representative or Support team. As always, EchoVideo is fully committed to helping our college and university clients deliver the highest quality instruction to maximize student success.
Attachments
The below list is the attached PDFs for a variety of quick reference guides for several of the relevant and more common EchoVideo features. Please note that some of these guides are slightly out of date and are in the process of being updated. However, you may still find the essential steps useful in directing you toward your goal.