Tag Archives: echo360

Reusing Echo360 content

Teaching, tutorial, Uncategorized, Video Creation, , ,

There are two different ways of sharing echo360 content in Blackboard, and therefore two different ways to reuse the content as well.

Most instructors at SBU currently link to their echo360 videos via LTI links.  This has been the only way in the past to get the analytics that you needed, give the students the active learning tools and also automatically post new scheduled recordings as they happen throughout the semester.  Using the LTI link is the process where you are going to a content area where you want the videos to be placed, selecting “Build Content -> Echo Cloud”.

When reusing the LTI link in a course you have copied from a previous semester, you will want to go to where the link was made (it will still be there), click on that link and reconnect it.

 

The second way and previously feature sparse method (but this has been rapidly changing!), is to embed the echo360 content into any area of your site that gives you the ability to use the Bb text editor.  You can embed content using the wysiwyg editor using the button : “Add Content -> Echo360 Video Library”. It looks like a plus sign in a circle and is the last button on the bottom right.

When you have embedded content and you run a course copy, the video will still work without further tweaking.  It is for this reason, and because echo360 has been working hard to bring all the features to the embed model that already exist in the LTI links, that we will be suggesting using embed going forward (at least, as soon as playlists are up and running and that could even happen this week).

 

 

 

Organize and Share content changes upcoming in echo360

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We are writing to inform you of upcoming changes to how you can organize and share content in Echo360. These changes will improve the ability to share content with others, organize shared and personal content, and find content in your Library.


 

Echo360 Community,

We are writing to inform you of upcoming changes to how you can organize and share content in Echo360. These changes will improve the ability to share content with others, organize shared and personal content, and find content in your Library.

What is changing?

The upcoming changes involve three key components, which are explained below:

  • The Groups feature will be renamed Collections
  • Collections will be added to the Library
  • The existing class collection feature on the section homepage will be renamed to “Class Group” to avoid confusion

All current Groups capabilities will be available in Collections and new capabilities will be rolled out in future releases, making Collections a more powerful way of sharing and organizing content than is currently available.

In the current user interface, Groups is a separate tab, accessed in the top navigation as shown below.

Collections_Picture1

When Groups is renamed to Collections, users will see their Collections on the Library tab as well as on a separate Collections tab, as seen below.

Pic2_customercomm

Also, the feature that allows the instructor to create collections of classes inside an Echo360 Section will be renamed Class Groups as shown in the image below. This will reduce confusion with the new Collections feature, as shown in the image below.

Picture1----2


Why is this feature changing?

By renaming Groups to Collections, it will be clearer that this feature offers a way to organize content as well as to share it with others. Collections can be used by individuals to organize content in their libraries without the need to share it. When a Collection is shared, the new structure will make it easier for users to find content that has been shared with them without the need to navigate to a separate tab.

We will be building out the capabilities and permissions for content shared in Collections going forward and this name will make more sense for the new capabilities that are planned.


How does this affect users?

This change doesn’t remove any existing capabilities and should make new capabilities easier to implement into content management workflows. Other than adapting to a new name, the primary impact of this change is that users will no longer need to navigate to a separate tab to find shared or organized content.


When will this change happen?

At this time, we anticipate this change to be implemented in our first deployment of 2022, on 11-12 January 2022.

What do you need to do?

This change will be pushed automatically and there will be on-screen orientation to explain the changes. To better prepare your users, you may want to provide them with advanced notification. Please feel free to share this email and/or the screen shots in your communications.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact your Echo360 representative.

All the best,
Echo360 Team

 

Getting Started with Echo360

Teaching, tutorial, Uncategorized, , , ,

 

These pages are here to provide Instructors a walk-through of the more commonly used features of Echo360. The pages contain click-through infographics, videos, links to our online documentation, and Quick Reference Card links, available for viewing and download as PDFs.

Start with the Overview. Learn about the typical uses of the platform, navigation in and around Echo360, and get insight from other instructors on creating media and engaging students.

 

Overview of echo360Creating and uploading mediaSharing and embedding video Overview of Echo360 analyticsEditing MediaIntegration with MS Teams and Zoom

 

The menu image in the top-left corner of every page opens a Table of Contents for everything here. Easily browse for the pages you want to view or re-visit. Hover over each item in the list to see the full title of the page. Go ahead, click it now! The Search functionality is on the top-right corner of every page. The Main menu icon is in the footer of every page.

Using a Universal Blocker and video viewing not getting counted?

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If you watch echo360 videos as part of your class, and your instructor has told you that you have not been watching them…  AND you use a universal blocker, you may need to add echo360 as a trusted site.

for example, for ublock specifically – add this to trusted sites:

@@||api.echo360.org/analytics-collector/player/beacon

@@||api.echo360.org/analytics-collector/player/session

 

Note… the fact that you watched the video won’t count until after you have these lines in place, so you would still need to replay the video for it to show up in the analytics that your instructor sees.

 

 

Where Can an Instructor Turn ASR On and Off in Echo360?

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SBU will be setting Echo360 to automatically produce Automatic Speech Recognition after a recording is finished.  This will bring it into line with Zoom and VoiceThread which already do this.

If the instructor would like to turn this back off, they can follow this link:

Enable or Disable Automatic Transcriptioning for a Section (ASR)

image of setting panel in echo360

Accepting Videos as an Alternative form of Course Assessment

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This is about using a echo360 mashup tool to accept video submissions inside of Blackboard and which instructor will be able to grade under Needs Grading in the Grade Center.  This is an excellent alternative to high stakes grading via traditional exams.

First you will want to create an assignment. You will go to your Assignments area and go to Assessments -> Assignment.

Give it a name and add instructions for the students to follow.

Create a due date and points possible for the presentation.

Make the assignment available to the students.

Submit.

 

What the students see:  (You can also see this yourself using the student preview mode, entered by clicking on this icon in the upper right part of the screen in blackboard:

Under assignments, they locate your assignment and click in it’s name.

They see the points possible and the instructions that you wrote previously.

They need to click on Write Submission to get to the Blackboard WYSIWYG editor. They should type the name of their assignment into this text box and then select the Mashups button.

Then they click on Mashups -> Echo360 Video Library

This opens a new window for them where they have three choices.    They can choose any video already in their echo360 video library. (That is Choose From My Home), they can create something new (Create New Media) or Upload a video they have on their computer. This is what the different options look like:

Choose from home allows the student to either browse or search for files in their echo360 library.

Create New Media will give them the option to Launch Universal Capture from their computer.

Where they can name the video and start recording from their webcam, desktop and audio.

and finally Upload Existing:

Here they can grab videos from their cloud storage locations or browse from their computer.

After they have typed the name of their presentation and selected the video, they will click submit.

After submitting they will get a submission confirmation:

As the instructor, you can find the student submission under Needs Grading in the Grade Center:

…where I will see the list of submitted assignments and I can either chose Grade All or go through them one by one.  Here is the assignment I submitted and you can view the presentation, grade it and leave feedback for the learner right here.

Huge Update in Echo360’s Universal Capture!

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It now allows for live streaming!

I’ve done some tests already.  I’m seeing a 10 sec lag on what comes out of my mouth and what comes through the stream.  The screen share seems about 3 seconds ahead of my camera’s live video.  There is a 15 secondish lag between when you start streaming and the stream actually begins.

I was testing on a laptop that had a hard wire connection to my router at home… the receiving computer was on the wireless.

 

Here is their documentation which includes technical requirements:

https://learn.echo360.com/hc/en-us/articles/360041458112

I will be doing more tests… but this is awesome news for additional options for synchronous and asynchronous teaching and learning!

You don’t have to download a new version of the software.  If you have never used it before, the software can be downloaded from echo360.org with your netid and password.

 

More to follow!

 

Two Ways to Recycle Older Echo360 Content for Online Usage

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If you were the primary instructor for a course within Echo360 for a prior semester’s recordings, you can easily reuse those recordings for this semester.

First option:  Just put the entire semester into this semester’s blackboard.

You will want to login to Blackboard, go to the course area that you want your link with Echo360 to appear (typically some content folder) and “Build Content” -> “Echo Cloud”.

Now give the link a name. This may be something like “Course Videos”, “Video Lectures”, etc.

Click “Submit”.

You now click on that link you just made.

Connect your Echo360 Content

Select the Term, Course and Section that your want to reuse from.

 

Now Click the lighter blue button that says “Link Content”

The entire list of videos from the older class will now appear for your students.

Option 2:

Curate the videos that you want your students to use from your Echo360 Library.

For this, you will login to echo36.org with your netid and password.  [If you are not currently using Echo360 for your current course, first make a link to the section you’re teaching now by following these directions and then come back to these directions. Alternatively, contact tlt_its@stonybrook.edu for assistance in creating the section.]

Select the tab “My Content”

Hover over the video you want to use, and “…” will appear in the lower right, select “Share”.

from the Share Settings screen you will find many ways of sharing the video.  We are going to use the “Class” option.

Select the current course that you want this video to be loaded into. Select New Class, name the topic of the class, the date that you expect them to view it, describe it if you want, and make decisions about when you want the video to be available to view.

Do this for all of the videos that you want in your blackboard site.  When you check the link you created in the blackboard site, you will see all the videos you chose listed.

 

 

 

Creating new sections in Echo360

Keep Teaching, Uncategorized, ,

You may want to need to create a new section in Echo360 if you have need to store videos and/or power points for a course, but have not used Echo360 so far this semester.

 

To create a new section in Echo360, we will want to login to Blackboard, go to the course area that you want your link with Echo360 to appear (typically some content folder) and “Build Content” -> “Echo Cloud”.

Now give the link a name. This may be something like “Course Videos”, “Video Lectures”, etc.

Click “Submit”.

You now click on that link you just made.

Connect your Echo360 Content

Select the Term, Select your Course, and then select “Create a New Section”.

Enter the Section Number in the form 01, 02 etc.

Description is optional

Click Save

Now Click the lighter blue button that says “Link Content”

You can now begin to upload content to your course for this section by clicking New Class.  A Class is going to be the day that you want the students to view the content. You select the date first and then after that Class is created you can upload associated content by click on the plus sign in that row. Content can be videos, or powerpoint type presentations.

 

Heat Maps are back in Echo360

Teaching, tutorial, , ,

This used to be a feature in the old echo360 locally hosted service that we had, and now due to popular demand, it has returned.

Heat Maps are visual indicators that show the instructor what parts of the classroom recording the students are watching the most.

To look at your heat map for a specific video, you would want to login to echo360.org, then go to your content, find a video you are interested in and clicking on it to open the details page. 

You can lay the heat map on top of the video by clicking on the button in the bottom right as seen above.  The higher the graph spikes upwards, the more students watched that particular part of the video.