Interactive Media can now be added to classes in an Echo360 course just like videos and presentations. Interactive media what results when you add a poll to a piece of video or audio media. The poll "gates" the playback so that the viewer (student) cannot continue viewing or listening until they respond to the poll.
Once added to a class, you can make the media available or unavailable, or set an availability schedule, making it visible to students beginning on a certain date and/or for a set period of time.
Classes are limited to one video/audio and one presentation, or one piece of interactive media. This is due to the hybrid nature of interactive media, being both a video AND polling questions.
The effects of this are as follows:
- You cannot add interactive media to future classes created to hold scheduled lecture recordings. The video-media slot for those classes is reserved for lecture capture, indicated with a gray placeholder icon.
- If a class already contains a video and/or a presentation, you can replace it with interactive media but you must share to the class from your Library or from a Group (if you have share permissions), or remove all media from the class first.
Note that replacing any media in a class removes all associated student data and analytics for the original media.
- If you need to provide multiple items of the same media type for a particular class or topic, create a new class with the same date or title to contain the supplemental media. You can also create a collection, then group related classes together in the collection.
Classes with interactive media open in a new tab for students, and use the newer version of the Echo360 media player. The media player for interactive media in a class does not yet have Notes or Confusion flags like the current classroom media player does. It may have a Discussions panel if that feature is enabled for your course. For more information on the tools and features available, see Viewing Content in the New Player.
Two things to note:
1) If your Echo360 course uses Public-type Access Links to the course to allow anonymous users to view course materials, they will NOT be able to view interactive media classes. Anonymous users cannot respond to polls, making the video portions gated on those polls not viewable to these users. The same is true for polling slides in presentations, however non-polling slides in a deck are not gated on the polling slides. Anonymous users simply cannot respond to the polling slides.
2) Interactive media classes cannot be viewed through the Echo360 Mobile App; mobile app users will need to view the interactive media class through a supported mobile or desktop browser.
To add interactive media to a class
- Navigate to the class list for a section, either by clicking a Course tile on the Courses page or via a link in your LMS/VLE.
This opens the class list, as shown below.
- For any class that contains no media click the blue plus icon, identified in the below figure.
- Select Add Interactive Media from the list of options that appears.
- From the library media selection list, select the media you want to add to the class.
Use the Search box and/or the Sort options at the top of the list to find the media you are looking for.
- Click Import.
The class list appears with the media in the class you selected to add it to.
Click the interactive media icon in the class list to access options for the video such as:
- Rename the media or add a description if the uploaded video still has the filename instead of a more descriptive title (click Edit Details)
- Make the media unavailable or set availability on a schedule for students (click Make Unavailable or Availability settings)
The below figure shows an Interactive Media icon selected from the class list, and options available for that media. See also Magic Class List Icons and Overview: Instructor Class List.