The look and feel of the Player is changing! Upcoming changes are identified in this article by providing screenshots labeled "Old UI" and "New UI".

A Note on Terminology: This article, along with many throughout the online help, uses the term "video" to refer to some media. Know that wherever "video" is used, the information and procedures provided also apply to any audio-only files you may have. Interactive media (video / audio with embedded polls) are referred to specifically where applicable.

A Poll is a reusable question that can be added to media to request a response from the viewer.

When you add a poll to a video, interactive media results. The poll gates the playback of the video, so the student cannot continue viewing until they respond to the poll.

Click on a video in your library to open the Media Details page, then select Add Poll, as shown in the figure below.

After embedding one or more polls into the video, clicking Save creates a new media piece, now an Interactive Media type. The original video remains unchanged. This lets you continue to use the video in other applications or replace it with the new interactive media if appropriate.

Tips For Adding Polls to a Video

While creating a piece of interactive media is fairly straightforward, there are a few things you should know to avoid issues and use your new media seamlessly.

Edit the video first

You cannot use the EchoVideo video editor to edit interactive media. If the video needs to be edited for use as interactive media, you must edit the video before you add polls to it. This is due to various limitations but is primarily because each poll in the interactive media has a timestamp, indicating its location in playback. If you edit the video portion, those timestamps are no longer accurate. Furthermore, editing a video sends it back through the media processor in EchoVideo; the media processor has no knowledge of polls.

You may notice that the edit media option is grayed out on your interactive media. Editing interactive media means editing the polls embedded in the video. Add more, remove some, and edit the polling questions themselves. So, to edit the interactive media, you select Edit Polls. This is a little confusing the first few times you approach it. "Why is Edit Media not available? I want to edit my interactive media!"

Just understand that interactive media is a new type of media—not video or poll but a combination of the two—and as such, it has different rules about using it.

Place the video playhead before you add the poll

When adding a poll to a video, there are a few limitations:

• You cannot place the poll in the intro or outro section (if the video has either).
• You cannot place two polls in the same location of the video; they must have timestamps that differ by at least one second.

When you select to add a poll to a video (by creating one or adding one from your library), the default is to place that polling question at the current location of the video playhead. So, the easiest way to add one in your desired location is to play or scrub the video to the location you want, pause, and then add the poll. The timestamp box for the poll allows you to tweak this location if you did not pause at the exact place you wanted.

Once added, click play again, pause, and embed your next poll.

A few more tips include:

• If the video has an intro clip but must START with a poll, play the video to the end of the intro, pause, and then add the poll.
• If the video has an outro clip but must end with a poll, play it near the end, but before the outro clip, pause it, then add the poll.
• If you want two or more polls together, add the first one, click play to the next second, then pause and add the next one. Polls need to be offset by at least one second from each other. But you can have as many polls as you like strung together for several seconds if needed.

Rename the new piece of media

The new interactive media will have the same name as the video / audio you selected to embed polls into. For this reason, you may want to click the tile menu and select Edit Details to rename the media to indicate that this is the interactive media version of this item and, as such, contains embedded polls.

The interactive media you create has a different icon indicator to show that this is not just a video or audio file. But renaming also helps. The figure below shows an ad hoc capture turned into a piece of interactive media, with the new name and the interactive media icon visible on the media tile.

Limitations of Interactive Media

Only for authenticated users

BUILDING BLOCK END-OF-LIFE ANNOUNCEMENT

As of 30 Dec 2024, the Anthology (Blackboard) Building Block has officially reached its end of life for use with EchoVideo.

Prior to the end-of-life date of December 30th, 2024, all Building Block content must have been converted to LTI 1.1 Deep Links. For more information from Anthology, please see Convert Building Block Content to LTI.
For more information from us, please see Building Block to LTI Migration Overview and Converting Blackboard Building Block Content to LTI 1.1 Deep Links.
NOTE that while migrating to LTI 1.3 may appear to be an option within Blackboard, it has not been fully tested by us. We are only supporting migrating to LTI 1.1.

Students can view your interactive media from the Class list, through authenticated share links, or embeds in your LMS / VLE. 

The reason for this limitation is that we cannot allocate student responses to a poll unless we know who is responding. So the viewer of the media needs to be authenticated in EchoVideo (which happens in the background when they click play).

Students Can Submit Each Response One Time

Unlike the activity slides in presentation slide decks, students will not be allowed to change their responses once they have been submitted. This is because the video is gated upon receiving a response, and once one is submitted, the video is open to viewing. Allowing students to change their submission bypasses the purpose of the gating.

After a student responds, they are shown their answer along with the Correct answer if one is identified for this polling question. If Feedback has been provided for the poll, they will see that below their response. Students also see a Continue button that allows them to continue the playback of the media.

Viewing Student Responses to Embedded Polls

For all Interactive Media, you can view the responses from the course Polling tab, or the Polling tab of the Media Details page. From either place, you can select the LMS / VLE or EchoVideo course where the item is published and then select which poll's responses you want to view. In addition, both polling response locations allow downloading student responses to a CSV file.

The figure below shows the Polling tab on the media details page.