Embed Audio Files without using Course Quota

[thuff]

Hello,

We are in the beginning stages of switching over to Canvas as our LMS. I am currently working on transferring the Language Courses, however, I ran into an issue. As our Language Courses contain several Audio Files for pronunciation reasons, we have hit a Course Quota barrier. Our Online Language courses are very media heavy. We are aware that we can adjust the Quota per course, however, we would like to use the least amount of Quota possible.

I have searched the Edu Apps available to try to find a solution. Came up with 3 possible solutions but neither of them really seem to be the ideal solution. Mediacore was just bought out and no longer accepting new business so that is out. DropBox works but then the learners have to download each individual file before being able to listen and with a course that could have 5-6 files per unit that could get a bit annoying to do. Maybe I'm not using DropBox correctly? The 3rd option is Planet eStream. I am currently using a trial version but it doesn't seem to allow me to upload my own audio files but use audio files from an existing library- maybe this is because it is the trial version? I have a meeting for a demo for Planet eStream coming up so maybe that will answer all of my questions.

In the meantime, I was hoping that someone else has ran into a similar issue and found a solution that could work. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

[ajohnson]

Does your IT department have servers these materials could be put on? All the universities I worked with/at had various servers (regular web servers and streaming servers) available for faculty/course use.

I'd avoid putting them in the course simply because every iteration of the course (another semester, another section) is another copy of the files.

[bgibson]

"...because every iteration of the course (another semester, another section) is another copy of the files"  I've been told this is not the case with Canvas.  A single copy of the file is referenced from multiple locations (courses).  Although, I don't know if the referenced files count toward each course quota.  *And, this got me to thinking, what if I put these files in a single Canvas course and then referenced them from other courses.  How would course quotas be handled in the referencing sites?

[Stef_retired]

 @bgibson ​, I don't know the answers to all of your questions, but your last one also got me to thinking:

[W]hat if I put these files in a single Canvas course and then referenced them from other courses.  How would course quotas be handled in the referencing sites?

Unless your students are enrolled in the course containing the files, they won't be able to view them. You will be able to, but they will not.

[bgibson]

• Make this course publicly visible (student data will remain private)
• Make this course visible to authenticated users

Might either of these course Settings options be used to make the files accessible for students not in the specific course?

[Stef_retired]

Good idea,  @bgibson ! ! I haven't tested the accessibility of files in publicly-visible courses, but I imagine that those settings might do the trick. I'll defer to others who have more experience in that arena (and I'll ask around).

[Stef_retired]

 @thuff , I envision that there will be several solutions offered, so I've changed the format of your post to a discussion.

Perhaps this approach is available to you: Our school hosts all audio files on its own server, harvests links to the files, and drops them into courses as appropriate. The audio plays beautifully and doesn't require any downloading on the part of the student.

[Stef_retired]

Also,  @thuff , as long as the material isn't copyrighted, you could use any run-of-the mill video creator to convert the audio into video--and a bonus is that you could add title cards and other directions to students--and then upload the videos to YouTube. You can set the privacy settings in YouTube such that the videos don't appear in search results. Embedding YouTube videos in Canvas is a piece of cake.

[thuff]

Yes, this is a solution that we've also been playing around with. Was just curious to see if there were other options out there as we already use Youtube for other resources as well and didn't want the course to be a heavy "YouTube Course". I think the server solution could work and definitely one that seems to be a better long-term option. Thank you!

[canvas_admin]

You can also set the quota at the admin level to pertain to all of your courses.  We currently have 1.5 GB set for all of our courses but none are in danger of hitting that barrier yet. Also, if you can embed the audio natively in Canvas via the Rich Content Editor, it does not count against your quota.

[Michael_Cain]

I haven't had a chance to try embedding items using the RCE, so pardon my ignorance with it.  If I have an HTML5 file created in Captivate (includes video), would the RCE allow me to embed that file on a content page and not count against my quota?  I'm worried I would lose the interactions we have in it, making it useless.

Thanks!

[canvas_admin]

Michael,

Unfortunately, I do not have any experience using Captivate.  The RCE will accept standard video file types (What types of files are supported in Canvas?). 

I'm not sure if you've already looked at this, but here is a discussion surrounding using Captivate in Canvas that may be able to help you: Adobe Captivate and Canvas

[Michael_Cain]

That discussion link is very helpful.  I had not found that one yet.  Thanks, Mark!

[help]

Dear Traci

We have come across this similar problem before with our online Arabic program and we found a pretty good solution by using vimeo pro for hosting and embedding videos and for audio files, we used soundcloud - soundcloud's embed widget is quite flexible with the ability to embed playlists.

Shamless plug below - our presentation at Instructure Con 2015 may be of interest to you

Ismael