[Studio] Enable Studio Comments to be Universal

[lshulman]

By "universal" I mean to not limit instructor comments to one specific course.

If I create/use a Studio video I want to use in more than one course and I add comments for students to reply to (e.g. answer questions as they watch the video), I want to be able to use the video with my comments in multiple course sites, reuse it over multiple semesters. Current functionality only allows the comments to appear in the one course site they are created in. 

Better functionality: instructor adds comments in Studio, before embedding in a course site. And all of those comments will be included when the video is embedded in the course site (rather than having to create the comments after the video is embedded in the course site). Then the video with comments can be added to any number of course sites, reused over multiple semesters. The comments the instructor adds in Studio do not get lost when embedding it into a course site.

Naturally, student responses or additional comments added within a given course site, after the video is embedded, will only be maintained in the specific course the student is in.

[jensenb1]

I also think that this would be a fruitful option. As a work-around for now, I ended up embedding my comments in a quiz, so now I have both comments and quiz available for future courses. The quiz can be really easy, just a quick true/false to verify that learners have read your comments.

[DannonMcg734]

I just had a chat with a support agent where I asked for the same thing.  I sure hope that Canvas looks into making this a possibility.  It would be SO helpful for those of us with multiple courses!

[rexj]

In some video streaming platforms (YouTube, Microsoft Stream) it is possible to create clickable timestamps and hyperlinks into the video description.

Being able to create clickable timestamps is useful for creating a table of contents for a video. This adds functionality and ease of use for students to be able to focus in on a particular portion/topic within a video.

The current description field in Canvas Studio only supports plain text. One can enter the timestamps but they only appear as text. Likewise, formatting (line breaks) are not supported. 

Description in Microsoft Stream:

Description in Canvas Studio:

  

[possiBri]

We are dealing with this exact same issue right now. We want to be able to have the analytics that Canvas Studio provides, while also allowing students to more easily jump around a ~30-minute video to the sections they need (especially if reviewing before retaking a quiz).

[rexj]

+1 @possiBri 

This is especially frustrating if/when someone imports from YouTube and that video already has the timestamps in the description. They do not work when copy/pasted into Studio.

[possiBri]

Yes, exactly. We had already decided that we could handle the timestamps not being clickable, but then when I discovered yesterday that the description won't even allow plain text with line breaks to still show the timestamps to students I went on a hunt to see if anybody else had brought up the issue. A colleague mentioned a different external tool add-on that they use with their campus instance that still provides analytics as well as other advanced features, but I haven't looked into it more to see if timestamps is one of those features. I will update if I find a workable alternative!

[RachelHanan]

My faculty are asking how to do this in Studio for long videos their medical students have to watch. I've been following these conversations and tinkering around with HTML, but haven't come up with a solution either. I hate to send them to YouTube instead. 

[rexj]

@RachelHanan 

Exactly. It may have taken time for this feature to be part of other platforms, but it is fairly standard across video platforms. Hopefully the development team will be able to implement sooner than later.