Ability to replace the media button in the new RCE with our media platform of choice

[burrielr]

The move to put all LTI plugins into a dropdown is going to severely impact media usage at our institution as presently our faculty and students are accustomed to pressing an existing button on the old RCE when inserting media into their Canvas content. Having to select a dropdown menu to find their media option hidden therein means that most won't find the option at all. To have a different media button in the toolbar (the native Canvas media integration) front and center presents a situation with our users will instinctively press on that button.

Compounding matters is that depending on screen/browser size, the "PLUGIN" button in RCE may not appear, replaced instead with a 3 button "MORE" button, meaning as many as 3 clicks to get to the 3rd party media platform of the school's choice.

Here is the toolbar on wide screens with the browser fully expanded:

Here is the toolbar on narrower screens or with the browser not fully expanded:

Yet another compounding factor is that Canvas uses the terminology "My Media" in the native Canvas media integration, a term already regularly used elsewhere, specifically for schools using the Kaltura LTI plugin.

To present users with two DIFFERENT "My Media" elements, each going to different media repositories would be catastrophic, resulting in endless user support headaches.

We propose that Canvas administrators should be able to choose which media platform we want for that button (be it Kaltura, Panopto, YouTube, or Instructure's Canvas Studio, etc.)

Short of that, alternatives include:

- Ability to remove the native Canvas media button from the new RCE

*AND*

- Ability to select one or two LTI integrations of the administrator's choosing to appear on the new RCE in a position of their choosing rather than in the plugin dropdown

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

For more information, please read through the Canvas Deploy Notes (2020-08-26)

[bbroniak1]

Great post here. We also would very much like this change.

[russell_j_licht]

We fully support this proposal - these changes will have significant negative impact on our end-users as Kaltura is a major component of our online learning experience.

[Tasha_Biesinger]

Yes, this makes sense! We should be able to point the Media button to the media platform in use at our institution.

Also, why is the RCE toolbar truncating when there is still plenty of empty space about the text box? Shouldn't it only truncate to the extent that the text box width is reduced? See second image in the original feature request post.

[makraft]

We fully support this proposal.

I will also add that the removal of icons on the third party tools is also disappointing. Our users are acclimated to certain icons (Google, our custom Kaltura button, etc. ). This switch to text only entries maintains the black and white color scheme of the new toolbar, but I have not heard of any functional reason not to include icons. 

[lynn_greenough]

I have also chimed in to our CSM that the alt text "LTI tools" on the plug-in button is not meaningful to the average Canvas user

 

[kldixon]

At the University of Minnesota, we agree the upcoming changes to the Rich Content Editor toolbar forcing all LTI Plugins into a dropdown will introduce major problems, especially for Media. Just because Instructure has a media management platform to sell. it doesn’t mean it meets our needs, now or when we had an RFP in 2016. If anything, I’d like to see less Canvas-sourced media than more, so this work is trending in the completely wrong direction.  Kevin, for Alex

[jhouder]

Thanks for your post and great suggestions.

Where can I read more about this upcoming change? We also use the More External Tools menu to embed Kaltura media, and I'm not seeing much about this in the release notes. I'd like to give our instructional designers as advance a heads-up as possible. Thanks again.

[sharris]

This will directly impact the value our users get out of our media tool, Kaltura (which we have invested heavily over the past 5 years) by making it more difficult for faculty to embed content. Having the built-in Canvas Media and Kaltura "My Media" has always been a cause for confusion. It would be great to be able to disable the built-in Canvas feature.

[christopher_phi]

There are a couple of new documents that are relevant that I wanted to add to this thread. First the release notes for this week: 

https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-17761-canvas-release-notes-2019-10-19#jive_content_id_Rich_...  

State that the new Rich Text Editor will be enabled as a feature option on October 19th, 2019 when it will be available to be turned on at an account level or a course-by-course basis. The release notes also state that it will be enabled by default for all institutions on June 20th, 2020. 

In addition, Canvas has made some documentation on the new editor available: 

https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-17764-canvas-release-new-rich-content-editor 

Hopefully this gets on the product radar sooner rather than later! 

[adehart]

We fully support this proposal as well.