But in the absence of a campus-wide solution, we have to get creative about how we do it.

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1 HOW TO SESSION : Creating weekly audio and/or video journals for students to track progress Overview How great would it be for students to have a record of their language learning (audio or video) from week one to the end of the semester?! But the challenge is: where do we put them? For audio, it s not a major problem. Using a free program called Audacity, students are able to create their own audio recordings and upload them to CULearn for teachers to see. When placed in CULearn, these recordings will show up automatically as a player, which is easy to listen to. It looks like this: For video it s a bit more complicated. In a perfect world, the university would have a self-contained video system like YouTube that we (faculty & students) could upload to our videos to and apply privacy settings to in order to limit who could see what. But in the absence of a campus-wide solution, we have to get creative about how we do it. In today s session, we will be looking at possible approaches to both audio and video. Audio Using Forums in CULearn Probably the easiest way to do a weekly talk journal is by using the Forums in CULearn. If you just use a Standard Forum, then everyone will be able to listen to everyone s recordings which is probably not optimal. A better way to do it is to create a Standard Forum in Group Mode and then assign a single student to each group.

2 Actually this is backwards because with Moodle you have to create the groups first and then create the Forum. Here s how: turn editing on under Course Administration click Users click Groups which should take you to a page like this: now choose Auto-create groups. This takes you to a window that looks something like this: This sets the number of members in the group created by the system. This defines how names are created. In this case it will create groups called: Student 1, Student 2, Student 3, etc. But you could also use the target language: студент 1, студент 2, студент or mwanafunzi 1, mwanafunzi 2, mwanafunzi 3 This specifies how the groups are assigned.

3 change the contents so it matches the picture above. click on the word Grouping and make sure No grouping is selected. When you click Submit, the system will create individual groups for each member of the class. Now that you have created all the individual groups, it s time to create a Forum where they can add their weekly recordings. from Add an Activity select Forum. on the Forum page you will see a series of choices. After giving it a title, the most important sections are: This allows students to upload files (any type of files). In this example, I ve chosen 2 but in a perfect world, you should set it to zero because we are going to have students upload their audio someplace else. This is where you set up your grading for the entire Forum. You can set it as Sum of ratings which will allow you to rate each week s submission up to a total of 10 marks (or whatever you set it to). This is important because it will keep all students (in their groups of 1) separate. and finally, when you click Save and return to course your Forum will be created. So now you ve done your work. Next, it s up to the students. As for weekly recordings, you may want to set specific topics for them to talk about (e.g. week 1=tell me about your family; week 2=what are you wearing; week 3=what are you doing on the weekend; etc.). Or maybe you might have them could just talk about what they learned this week, areas

4 they were finding particularly difficult, etc. Or other. That s for you to decide. Regardless, here are the mechanics of how it might work: students make their recording using Audacity or some other audio recorder that saves MP3 files. after saving their audio file, students will need to insert it in their Talk Journal Forum. the first time they go in, it will look like this: there is some flexibility about how student responses might look. (1) if they create one Discussion Topic called Recordings (or something), they can then add to it (by clicking Reply) all semester. Appearance varies depending on how they choose to Display replies:

5 (2) or they can choose to create a different Discussion Topic for each week. Like this: Video CULearn does not love video. Here s why: video files are big and sometimes the people who upload them using the Moodle Media button, do not minimize them before uploading. As a result (a) CULearn fills up unnecessarily with ginormous files and (b) playback can be super slow. also, CULearn is not a media server. Media servers, like YouTube or Netflix, are set up to host and distribute video. They optimize flow for different devices sending smaller files to smaller screens like phones; and bigger files to bigger displays. And, instead of sending the whole file all at once, they send pieces of the file bit by bit (i.e. streaming), which makes for a smoother more reliable experience. and finally, while CULearn allows faculty members to embed (put video directly in a page) using something called an iframe, students do not have this capability. As a result, except for YouTube videos, students are not able to embed video from any of the online video streaming sites. So, we are left looking for other alternatives. Techsmith Relay Techsmith Relay is a screen capturing tool, essentially a video recording of everything happening on your screen including mouse movements and sound. It also allows you to record your voice and, if you have a webcam attached, a video of you as a talking head. After you complete a recording, it is submitted to a Carleton media server where it is encoded (i.e. made streamable ). Then, when it is finished

6 processing, the student receives an with a link that tells them the video is ready to go. This link can then be forwarded to an instructor for viewing; which is nice right, because they are just sending a link rather than ing you a giant video file. So, all in all a pretty solid piece of software and we have had students using it to record Skype conversations with tandem language partners in other countries. However, there are some limitations: after uploading a video, the encoding step can take a long time depending on how many other jobs are in front of you and by a long time I mean more than 6 hours if using particular computers (especially new Macs) the video resolution can be too high quality (and therefore the file too huge) for the system to accept so you receive a Failed message which can be disheartening and, because of the previous 2 points, there can be a lot of s to deal with from concerned students whose video has not yet been processed Anyway, Carleton has licensing for Techsmith Relay and you can download it here for both Mac and PC: carleton.ca/capture/install/ I would recommend it for instructor use only. Use it to create how to videos for students that you can then embed in your CULearn courses. For student use, I would explore alternatives. Techsmith Fuse Like Capture, Fuse is a tool that allows users to upload video to a Carleton media server. The key difference is that you install Fuse on your mobile device (Android or ios) and use it either to record and upload video from your phone or record video with your camera and upload the resulting file with Fuse. An ASLA class is currently using Fuse to record signing in the classroom which seems like a pretty strong use case for the software. Having said this, the same problems that affect Relay also affect Fuse: long delays in uploading and concerned s from students. As well, students need to make sure they are on a wireless network and not their data plan when they upload videos or it will count on their phone bill.

7 Screencast-o-matic Very similar to Techsmith Relay, Screencast-o-matic is an online screen recorder that allows users to record up to 15 minute screen capture videos for free. When students have finished recording, they click Submit and receive options to Save as video file, Upload to Screencast-o-matic, or Upload to Youtube. Students should choose the second option. Then, unlike Relay, the resulting recordings will be stored not on a Carleton server, but rather on the Screencast-o-matic server which means three things: 1. students will need to create a free account on the system 2. the video files may or may not be on a Canadian server* 3. students need to make sure they click the checkbox that will make the videos NOT SEARCHABLE by Google Encoding time is much quicker with this tool than with Relay. * If you plan to use this site with your students, FIPPA requires that you make them aware of the following: Please be aware that by using this website, personal information may be stored on servers in the United States and they will be subject to U.S. laws, including the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, or Patriot Act as it is widely known. The Patriot Act allows U.S. authorities to conduct searches and to seize or compel the disclosure of records without resort to warrant. If any personal information is transferred for storage or processing or otherwise shared with a U.S. or U.S. controlled Canadian company there is a risk that the U.S. controlled company could be compelled to disclose that information to U.S. authorities without the individual s knowledge or consent under the Patriot Act. admissions.carleton.ca/contactandgeneralinformation/privacy-notice/ Big Blue Button You ve seen it hiding in the list of Activities on CULearn but maybe you ve never taken it for a test drive. You should. There appears to be a lot a person can do with BBB to meet your student recorded video needs. For this one, let s try it as a group because it s easier to explain in real-time. Cloud Storage And finally, perhaps the simplest approach, although not the most elegant, is to have students store their video files in one of a variety of Cloud Storage locations and share the link with you.

8 Onedrive Google Drive Dropbox Onedrive is a good choice because it keeps students within the Carleton environment. Here s how it works: student log into their Carleton here: students.carleton.ca/ click on the icon in the top left corner of the page (colours may vary) and choose OneDrive click New and Folder to create a folder called Talk Journal (Student Name) click on the icon to open the menu as below then they should choose Share and enter your (the teacher s) Carleton . They need to be sure to use your CUNET account: USE mikebarker@cunet.carleton.ca NOT mike.barker@carleton.ca the result of all this work is that now you can see any files that a student drops into these folders a similar process can be used for both Dropbox and Google Drive, but again you need to remind students of the Patriot Act and storing information on servers outside Canada.