VoiceThread allows teachers to upload, share, and discuss documents, presentations, images, audio files, and videos. Teachers and students can leave comments and use annotation tools to mark up the presented material. With VoiceThread, teachers and students can comment on the material at their convenience.

VoiceThread Feedback Word Cloud,

created with wordclouds.com

My department recently conducted a workshop on VoiceThread. The workshop included a panel of three faculty from diverse disciplines who discussed how they use VoiceThread in their courses. This post is going to highlight some of the important takeaways. It's not a how to for implementing VoiceThread into your online course. For information on how to use VoiceThread in Canvas, check out these resources:

Using VoiceThread in your Online Class

Using VoiceThread for Students

How To: Using VoiceThread LTIOne with Canvas

How is VoiceThread Used

VoiceThread can be used in so many different ways, as evidenced by the examples provided by faculty, including:

• Displaying work for feedback - student work can be displayed for feedback, such as in a graphic design or art class.
• Discussing techniques, approaches, readings - media (images, text, audio) can be posted and discussed.
• Interacting with classmates - students can dialogue with each other in an asynchronous format.
• Improving comprehension - teachers can use VoiceThread to explore difficult concepts in more detail. They can use voice comments and the doodle tool to explain complex concepts.
• Homework, quizzes, or answering questions from a prompt - comments can be moderated, so that no one sees them, except the teacher. That way, students can't see what their peers said in response to a teacher prompt.

To see VoiceThread in action, check out some featured VoiceThreads in higher education.

What's to like about VoiceThread?

One of the major benefits of VoiceThread is that it can be integrated with Canvas, so that students and instructors don't have to log in to the platform separately. Also, the VoiceThread gradebook can be integrated with the Canvas gradebook.

Another major pro is that the tools allows for asynchronous interactions. VoiceThread offers flexibility in terms of when and how users can reply to comments. Other pros include:

• Easier and faster to explain using video
• Users have multiple takes and are able to redo a video reply, if they don't like the way the first one turned out
• Users can read and revise comments as much as necessary
• Students have more time to organize their thoughts
• Different viewpoints can be shared
• Users have the flexibility to type/record comments

What are some difficulties of using VoiceThread?

The major cons that I've heard primarily have to do with software of technology issues. To mitigate this, I suggest to faculty using VoiceThread to provide a test VoiceThread, or make sure that the first VoiceThread assignment is low-stakes, and to be more flexible and understanding the first time around.

Aside from technical difficulties, the issue I hear most often in terms of the interface is that students don't initially recognize how to navigate through the slides, so providing introductory or orientation material to the tool is helpful.

Finally some students feel uncomfortable in front of the camera or they have trouble finding a quiet place to record their video or audio comments. Modeling naturalness or imperfection is a great way to help students feel more comfortable. If it isn't necessary to require audio or video, be flexible and let students reply with text comments, if they prefer.

Why use VoiceThread?

Another question I hear a lot is why use VoiceThread, when you can just use a discussion board, especially since, in Canvas, the discussion board allows students to reply with audio or video comments. Here are a few reasons:

• It is difficult to students to embed an image in Canvas discussions, and even if they do, students who are critiquing the image don't have an easy way to zoom in on the details. VoiceThread allows users to zoom in.
• VoiceThread includes a doodle tool, so that users can annotate the media they are discussing.
• VoiceThead includes an option for students to leave comments by calling on their phone. Canvas discussions require audio comments be recorded and then uploaded.
• VoiceThread allows comments to be moderated.
• VoiceThread allows comments to be left on each slide of the presentation, so you can have multiple threads within a single VoiceThread.

VoiceThread and Accessibility

Many people voice accessibility concerns as they learn about or use VoiceThread. Because VoiceThread comments can be in video or audio format, this can be problematic for students with visual or hearing impairments.

VoiceThread Universal, an accessible alternative to the VoiceThread platform, can be enabled for students who use a screen reader. The universal platform optimized for use with screen reader technology.

While VoiceThread Universal addresses webpage accessibility, it doesn't address the need for captions on video and audio comments and alt text on images. For a resource that discusses how to address this concern, see Penn State's Tips for making VoiceThread accessible.

To learn even more about VoiceThread and accessibility, check out some of these resources:

Conclusion

VoiceThread is an excellent way to bring the human element into your online and hybrid courses.

Happy VoiceThreading! If you have any VoiceThread resources, please share them in the comments!

Additional VoiceThread Resources

CI VoiceThread Faculty Toolkit

 @ghaines ‌

Lisa Barry

VoiceThread brings energy to your content, discussions and assignments. Adding voices and faces can improve social engagement and provide instructor immediacy to meet the needs of your students in the online environment. But meeting accessibility requirements adds another layer of consideration as you design and deliver your course. Our session provides a range of ideas on how you can convert your text heavy course to something more fun and interactive for your students who have a range of learning needs. New features and upgrades enhance the VoiceThread experience; unlimited auto captioning, in-video commenting, and more!

Years ago I used the API to find which LTI tools were used in a course, then switched to CD1 and now I'm using CD2. 

I built a Tableau report with several filters, including:

• Type of course: sis, non-sis or all
• State of the course: published, unpublished or all

How tools are included:

• Navigation: if a tool is visible on the navigation, then it is counted
• Assignment: if the assignment contains the launch URL for a given tool and is published, it is counted
• Modules: if the module item contains the launch URL for a given tool and is published, it is counted

Since there are course-level placements and account-level placements, and the names for a given tool at times vary, I use a case statement and regex to parse the URL.

There are some quirks with CD2 when pulling the data, and I documented what I used in CD1, then figured out how to find that in CD2, with example results for each query in CD2 for specific data before doing any joins.

Data Access Platform Datasets - CD2 table information

https://data-access-platform-api.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/tables/catalog.html#tables-in-canvas

The following is just one way of pulling the data. I have more “where” clauses, excluding URLs I do not want to pull, but the following are generic queries that can be adapted.

Tips:

In CD1 the workflow state for external tools was active, but that does not work in CD2. Instead you need to query the context_external_tools table for workflow_state !=  'deleted' AND workflow_state IS NOT NULL.

External Tools Visible on the Navigation

The courses table has a field called tab_configuration which needs to be parsed. 

Variations found in the tab_configuration json arrays for external tools:

{"id":"context_external_tool_<id>"},

{"id":"context_external_tool_<id>","hidden":true},

{"id":"context_external_tool_<id>","hidden":null,"position":11},

{"id":"context_external_tool_<id>","hidden":false,"position":52},

The {"id":"context_external_tool_<id>"} entry needs to be included, so it may be easier to set a default hidden value to null when you create the view. Entries to be counted as being on the navigation: hidden_type IS NULL OR hidden_type = false

Example: create a view using the tab_configuration data and the courses table containing the following (courses_tab_configuration):

• course_id
• sis_source_id
• course_code
• account_id
• workflow_state
• enrollment_term_id
• id (tab id)
• hidden 
• external_tool_id (parsing the id from context_external_tool_<id>

Example query:

SELECT c.external_tool_id, c.course_id, c.sis_source_id, c.course_code, c.account_id, c.workflow_state, c.enrollment_term_id, e.url

FROM courses_tab_configuration c 

INNER JOIN context_external_tools e ON (c.external_tool_id = e.context_external_tools_id) WHERE c.workflow_state <> 'deleted' 

AND c.tab_configuration_id LIKE '%context_external_tool%' 

AND c.external_tool_id IS NOT NULL 

AND ((c.hidden_type IS NULL) OR (c.hidden_type = false)) 

External Tools used in Assignments

The assignments table has a field called submission_types which needs to be parsed. 

Example json:

{"v":{"f":[{"v":[{"v":{"f":[{"v":"external_tool"}]}}]}]}}

Example: create a view using the submission_types data and the assignments table containing the following (assignments_submission_types):

• assignments_id
• context_id
• submission_types
• workflow_state

SELECT DISTINCT(a.assignments_id), a.context_id, c.sis_source_id, c.course_code, c.account_id, c.workflow_state, c.enrollment_term_id, ct.url

FROM assignments_submission_types a 

INNER JOIN content_tags ct ON(a.assignments_id = ct.context_id) 

INNER JOIN courses_tab_configuration c ON (a.context_id = c.course_id) 

WHERE a.workflow_state = 'published'

AND a.submission_types = 'external_tool' 

AND ct.url IS NOT NULL 

AND c.workflow_state <> 'deleted'

External Tools used in Modules

Module entries don’t seem to have an id that links to the context_external_tools table, so for modules I go by the URL.

SELECT DISTINCT(ct.content_tags_id), ct.context_id, c.sis_source_id, c.course_code, c.account_id, c.workflow_state, c.enrollment_term_id, ct.url

FROM content_tags ct 

INNER JOIN courses_tab_configuration c ON (ct.context_id = c.course_id) 

WHERE ct.content_type = 'ContextExternalTool' 

AND ct.url IS NOT NULL 

AND ct.context_type = 'Course' 

AND ct.workflow_state = 'active' 

AND c.workflow_state <> 'deleted'

Canvas currently has the ability to post comments in video (webcam) or audio form--though, the flash programs for these seem to be hit or miss for me.

For essay feedback, I want to be able to communicate what I'm seeing in a student's essay, but I don't necessarily need them to see my face. Far more valuable to me is to be able to point to aspects of the essay or assignment while I'm talking and to have the student see those specific aspects while they are hearing my comments.

I do this now using Camtasia. I open speedgrader and begin recording a screen capture with audio. I then have to save the file and upload it to Canvas using the media comment video upload option.

This works, but it is a bit clunky. My speed at grading would be greatly increased if I could press a button and simply begin recording the screen.

Again, I know the benefit of this with essays, but my guess is that it could be of benefit to almost any discipline. If an instructor is taking the time to record a comment of any sort, it is probably a comment that has something to do with the digital object that is right on the screen. The added benefit would be that if the recorder is capturing the screen and not just the current window, an instructor could use the video as a digital whiteboard. I can imagine a math instructor giving a just in time KhanAcademy style explanation for a problem on which a particular student seems to be having difficulties.

Since I have an android tablet with a stylus, if this could be incorporated into the android speedgrader app, that would be some wicked awesome future s%&t!!!

Measuring student achievement of course outcomes through a variety of assessments accommodates diverse learners, promotes critical thinking and encourages academic honesty (and helps meet QM Standard 3.4).

In traditional assessments, such as quizzes and tests, students select responses from the options provided and usually receive automated scores. In alternative assessments, students demonstrate proficiency though hands-on application of course concepts, and grading criteria is provided. 

Some hands-on assessments possible in Canvas: