Springing into 2022 with Studio

This blog from the Instructure Product Team is no longer considered current. While the resource still provides value to the product development timeline, it is available only as a historical reference.

AkosFarago
Instructure
Instructure
32
5389

Every time I glanced at my action item list in early December, it seemed like a mess. The holiday-month can be ruthless for a product manager if not planned accordingly and my plans were definitely in need of some heavy adjustments. Then things slowly got sorted out, I would say, almost by themselves and my action item list got a bit more friendly every day.

We like to use the word automagically. You want to know why a media thumbnail in Studio was spinning forever then why it loads properly the next morning. When developing software, it’s something that we must find reasoning for. It’s a glitch in the matrix and that cannot be left unaddressed. But what does it have to do with anything?

One of the challenges before Christmas for the Studio team was finishing Zoom integration. Chances are that you are reading this from one of the few schools which already integrated Zoom with Studio! The feature allows you to automatically import your Zoom recordings to your Studio library if those are saved to the Zoom Cloud. The closer we got to the holidays, the more we had to tweak our plans to get it out on time, but somehow… we delivered it more than a week before our own target.

Another fantastic effort was pushing down the number of bugs. We take bugs seriously and we have exact numbers where we want to be in an ideal case at any moment. We had an overwhelmingly high number in November, so to mitigate the situation we identified our targets for the next one, three and six months. Then I am finishing up my work on a late Thursday in December and I am facing the fact that we reached our 3-month target within one.

I could have started to dig up the hows but I realized that I would probably get to the same root-cause over and over again: Studio has a fantastic engineering team behind and people here actually care! This was especially reassuring since I spent most of December in the U.S working with a 9 hours time difference with the team which was less than ideal.

I finished the year with the best experience possible: I had my first face-to-face customer meeting. Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD) in Los Angeles accepted my visit on 17 Dec and we had a half an hour long discussion about Studio. One great takeaway from this was another confirmation that new Studio features are usually slowly adopted - and since we have tons of exciting stuff in the pipe, we need to find a way to have users tried out new features earlier. 

I am truly grateful to LBUSD for allowing me to add our post-discussion photo here as it’s such a great moment to recall! Thank you again!

 

20211214_112241.jpg

 

So here comes 2022 and we are already 3 weeks into it. The Studio team is primarily working on redesigning the whole Insights page. Expect a more robust way to interpret student viewership data that is significantly easier to navigate in and can also be exported if you wanted to do further reports on your own. 

Similar hot topic is video editing. Last year we had several calls with a number of schools to understand why and when editing video content comes handy and how it could provide a better learning experience for students. Video editing is a challenging topic from many angles (accessibility, I am looking at you!) but we seem to have worked ourselves through the most difficult questions and polished our design through several iterations. Actually, if you are interested to see our latest design, then drop me a direct message here with something like “I want to see video editing in Studio before anyone else” and I will reach out to you right away! We could definitely use some feedback here!

Hope you enjoyed this little snippet!

 

Take care,

Akos

This blog from the Instructure Product Team is no longer considered current. While the resource still provides value to the product development timeline, it is available only as a historical reference.

32 Comments
Jeff_F
Community Champion

@AkosFarago  I am not an easy sell, but I've been rather impressed with the Studio team, the approach, the new features, the stability, etc.  And your communications are genuine and effective. So +1.

BTW - Nearly ten years ago I wrote a proposal for us to promote faculty use of webcam and screen recording media within the asynchronous courses. And you know what? This year (2022) use of such media is now written as 'highly encouraged' within the faculty contracts. I am certain of the fact that the Studio tool has helped this become reality. Thanks for this!!

 

ps. I remain available to help alpha/ beta test any ideas or tools you have.  So long as you don't mind straight up feedback with no filters.  😁

amyslack
Community Participant

@AkosFarago This update is exciting. I love to hear more is coming on the editing front and on insights - these are both huge selling points when I am trying to get new faculty to use studio. I would love to see video editing and provide feedback, My institution is new to Canvas but I have lots of Canvas experience and am really excited to get my people on Studio more so this post gets me even more excited 🙂 

BethCrook
Community Contributor

Super excited about all of this @AkosFarago   and I would love to see the latest design and/or beta test (when needed) the video editing in Studio!  I was one of the first users of this add-on when it was Arc and have loved it since day 1!  I even wrote a love letter in a blog post on the old Community boards one year, I think it was for Valentines. 🥰 It ended up getting a little steamy and got a lot of snickers internally.  I wish I had the link.  😂

jireland4224
Community Explorer

Thanks for updating studio. We would love to test this out. Please contact us. 

shellysmith
Community Participant

Akos,

I want to see video editing in Studio before anyone else!  I'm super excited to try this. 

amy_quinn1
Community Novice

I would like to see more information on this, thanks

asergay
Community Explorer

On my phone, I cannot find the link to send you a message. But yes, I want to see video editing in Studio before anyone else.

alunsfor
Community Participant

Akos,  My teachers love using Studio and we are in the process of creating a PD streaming service using studio and being able to edit the videos would be great.  Right now it is a little challenging.  I would love to see the studio editing features before anyone else.  Please keep me in mind.

dbrace
Community Contributor

We are new to Canvas Studio (subscribed to it in the Fall 2021 and it is now available to our users as of Spring 2022 as we transition away from TechSmith Knowmia Enterprise) and "I want to see video editing in Studio before anyone else". 

AkosFarago
Instructure
Instructure

Thank you everyone for the kind words and responses, it is so great to see such an early interest on the concept of video editing. I am feeling truly happy about it!

We are finishing up the design in the following days, so I'll message all of you when we are ready to show you the prototype!



 


Jess_Jones
Instructure
Instructure

Thank you for sharing Akos.  I'd also love to see the Studio video editing preview!

androskik
Community Member

I would love to see editing in Studio!

ysmalls
Community Champion

@AkosFarago , great post and I would love to see the Studio video editing preview which is something my teachers have been asking for!

Also, maybe you can help me I have a ticket with you guys and Zoom and still can't get the integration to work, so excited for this integration but can't use it (sad panda here!).

Thanks

Landmark_Coll
Community Participant

Looking forward to improvements in Studio. Please include me on the list of beta testers. Thanks.

christopher_gil
Community Participant

Hey @AkosFarago 

per your awesome statement "Actually, if you are interested to see our latest design, then drop me a direct message here with something like “I want to see video editing in Studio before anyone else” and I will reach out to you right away! We could definitely use some feedback here!"

Count me in as wanting see the latest designs too!! We use Studio, and I love it, but could use more sparkle to get more teachers using it in our district. 

 

Thanks, 

 

Chris 

etchemendy_kath
Community Member

I'd love to see the new editing features!  It's a hard sell for teachers sometimes and this might just be the ticket.

 

knoxd
Community Participant

Studio is a powerful tool and video editing would make it even more so!  Thanks for your work to continuously improve the product and keep us apprised of coming changes.  I'd love a sneak peek into updates! 

tennymaria
Community Explorer

I would love to see the new editing features!  Very exciting!

reedbrian
Community Participant

Thank you so much to you and your team for your hard work and dedication to improving Studio. As an intense Studio user, I would love to see video editing in Studio before anyone else! 🙂

roberta_niche
Community Participant

We like Studio for some purposes, but here's some feedback about why we use Flipgrid, not Studio for video-based discussions:

Accessibility

  • When adding a video using the Upload Record Media button in the RCE toolbox, there is no option for requesting auto-generated closed captions.
  • To add a closed-captioned video to a discussion using Canvas Studio requires steps. More than 20.
  • Flipgrid creates editable CCs automatically.

Readability

  • Posts are vertical, requiring a lot of scrolling, especially in large classes. Threading does not indent enough to help with visual confusion between posts and replies to posts.
  • When Canvas Studio is used, the embed size is overly large and would require many steps to correct.
  • Flipgrid displays video conversations as an easy-to-view grid. Click on a face to view that person’s post.

Usability

  • When Canvas Studio is used, it confusingly creates 2 places to respond (the studio embed and the discussion object) unless tabs are turned off.
  • Canvas Studio does not allow background blurring or adding backgrounds.
  • Flipgrid allows background blurring and adding backgrounds.

I'm cheering your team and looking forward to future improvements. Please keep me in the loop. 

Landmark_Coll
Community Participant

@roberta_niche I just wanted to comment on one of your points. It's actually relatively simple to request automatic captions in Studio. I think the problem is that you're conflating the Studio tool in the RCE with the "legacy" record/upload media tool which lacks automatic captioning. I encourage you to look a this post I made on that subject.

I agree with many of your other points. There is a thread about the video size here,

Hope this helps.

Michael Keen
Landmark College

cheryltice
Community Member

Hello, @AkosFarago,

I want to see video editing in Studio before anyone else. 😀

Thank you!

jessica_gutierr
Community Participant

Thanks for the updates!  I would love to test things out!  "I want to see video editing in Studio before anyone else" 🙂

jason_m_sherwoo
Community Explorer

We get a large number of requests about video editing and so far we've been redirecting them to other third party sources before uploading into Studio.  I'd love to see the new editing features so they don't have to leave Canvas!

AkosFarago
Instructure
Instructure

Hi all!

I am thrilled to see the unstoppable interest about looking at the video editing prototype! On one hand this feels fantastic. It really does. One the other hand, we must narrow down the number as we simply don’t have the bandwidth to conduct 25 prototype testing session for this one single topic. Frankly, I never dreamed there would be such an interest!

So we figured this is how we’d approach the situation: I already met a few of you regarding other Studio features. We also had a round of user interviews where we discussed editing in November. So to meet as many of you as possible, this time I am going to reach out to a few of you who I have never had the chance to meet via Zoom.

I am going to keep on blogging about these opportunities in the future. We already have some solid feature plans for 2022 and we’d never be where we are now without the Community's help!

Thank you,

Akos

asergay
Community Explorer

Hi Jeff- I would like to be included in the preview as I am a user interface person. Might be helpful.

MaskeM
Community Explorer

Hello Akos,

I am interested in seeing the video editing feature within Studio!

Thanks

jblumberg
Community Contributor

@AkosFarago I find this post to be reassuring.  We are currently piloting Canvas Studio at our institution and are considering switching to Studio from Panopto.  In general, the UI and interface is great compared to Panopto.  We have been very nervous as there is no development on the roadmap .  It makes sense that bugs has been the focus, so your posts this year helps renew my faith in Studio.

We have two major impediments to adopting Canvas Studio:

1. There is no way to get the data out of Studio in any bulk manner.  We believe strongly that we should own our data and there is no bulk download option.  This would make it impractical to leave the platform (each faculty would need to individually download each video) and is a major risk to us adopting the product. This may be a deal breaker for us and it is easily solvable.  I think it should be a core principle that clients own their data and you should support users in retrieving that data.

2. The migration process cannot be fully automated.  We can import all videos via the API, but we will need to have a user manually share collections through the UI as this cannot be handled through the API. This workaround, though annoying, is likely doable... we are testing approaches currently.

I think some easy fixes to this are:

  1. Allow an admin user to see all videos, collections and courses in the system
  2. Provide a bulk download feature for a collection or course
  3. If an admin cannot be allowed to see all videos in the system, then provide a masquerade option with the masquerade feature mirrored in the API.  I would thinking simple giving an admin access to all videos is simpler to implement.

Implementing either #1 or #2 would make the choice of Canvas Studio obvious for our institution but as it currently stands with no development in the roadmap and no obvious off ramp we are quite nervous to adopt Studio.

Thank you for all your team is doing with a great product.

sherry_kull
Community Explorer

I would also love to see the video editing tools when the beta is ready.

Everything you're working on sounds great. I'd like to put in my two cents on the interactivity piece. Are you working on more engagements than the simple T/F, multiple choice options?  This is an area that EdPuzzle, for instance, is better at than Studio.

On another note, I completely agree with @roberta_niche. We don't have the luxury of Flipgrid, but I've experienced all the problems you mentioned.

Sincerely,

Sherry K

nicole_fleetwoo
Community Participant

@AkosFarago 

Please count me in for the video editing, as well.  We are trying to pull our computing facultly away from Panopto over to Studio. The other platform we run is Panopto and even though it's not as user-friendly as Studio, it's still a way more robust tool than Studio in many aspects. 

Panopto is searchable, it shows thumbnails of PPT slides, the reports available on the backend for us admins are wonderful - just to name a few. 

If Studio could do these things, it would be a lot easier to convince the rest of our faculty to move over. Having a reporting feature would also make it a lot easier for me to justify the cost of Studio as it currently accounts for over a quarter of my budget.  The current analytics available to admins is woefully lacking if you can call them analytics at all.

Considering the cost of Studio and how long it has been available, I expected it to be a lot more robust by this point. 

LynnLease
Community Explorer

@AkosFarago 

I want to see video editing in Studio before anyone else!

jfountain
Community Participant

Hi, @AkosFarago - thanks for meeting with us recently at Kansas City University.  I'm interested in hearing about timelines and new Studio features coming out.  Our highest priority is getting additional organization levels within collections (allowing collections within collections or a file structure), and admin reporting tools such as number of student views across a whole subaccount.  Please keep us in the loop.  Thank you!