Helping Your Students to Share Pre-recorded Presentations

A popular request from faculty has been how do I set up a way for students to:

  1. Create recorded presentations
  2. Share them with their classmates

This post will explain how to do this using Panopto and Canvas. However it is important to note that you can allow flexibility for how your students record their presentations based on what they are most familiar with. It is good to have a method for them to use (along with documentation & help) in case they don’t know where to start – but you don’t necessarily have to require them to do their recording this way if they have an idea that would work better for them.

Step 1: Create a Panopto Project Folder for Students to Share their Work

This step will create a location where students are able to upload and share videos with their class. If you have not already created a Panopto resource for your course through the course hub, you should complete that step first. As a refresher, below is a video to demonstrate how to do this.

Step 1A Create a class folder in Panopto

Step 1B Create a Sub folder within the class folder that gives students access to create items in that folder

Communicate to students, either through your course site, or another communication method information about the assignment along with instructions for how students can upload their recordings to your course Panopto – Share folder. We’ve included a video tutorial below to demonstrate this.

Step 2: One option for how students can record their presentations – Panopto

Once the students are familiar with your assignment & its guidelines give them the option to create the recording in any way that they feel most familiar. This will serve to give your students agency to use knowledge that they are already have, and only learn a new workflow if they do not know how to complete the assignment.

Be sure students understand that they all will need to try to share videos using the method described above.

For those who are not sure how to proceed, offer the following steps as a college-supported method that is available for all students for recording virtual presentations.

2A. Download & Install Panopto

Students also have access to download and use the Panopto video recorder. To do this they should:

  1. Open a web browser
  2. Navigate to https://go.middlebury.edu/panopto
  3. Log in with their Middlebury credentials
  4. Select to “Download Panopto”. This option will display in the upper left hand corner of your screen.
  5. Follow the prompts to download and install the application on your computer.

2B. Open and Record in Panopto

  1. Once the application is downloaded students should open the Panopto application on their computer.
  2. Then open the presentation or display window that they plan to record and situate it on the screen to suit their needs. (For example, if they plan to move between different tabs in a browser, pre-load the tabs with the content they plan to use, if they plan to walk through a slide presentation open the file in present mode.
  3. Open the Panopto application and select either their web cam or none in the primary window. In the Secondary window option select the screen they wish to display.
  4. The default location for their recording will be in their My Folder location in Panopto. Ask students to select the project folder that you created and shared in step 1b above.

Below is a video tutorial demo of this process.

Step 3: Upload your Audio/Video File to Panopto (Only needed if recording was not done in Panopto)

Note: Students will only need to complete this step if they did NOT use Panopto to create their recording.

In this step students would need to have their audio or video file saved on their computer. To move it quickly from a mobile device to their computer they may choose to email it to themselves if the file is not too large. (This is another reason to keep recordings short – moving them around gets more difficult the larger they are. )

  1. As a first step students should open a web browser and navigate to https://go.middlebury.edu/panopto and log in with their Middlebury credentials.
  2. Click on the button at the top of the screen labeled “Create”.
  3. Select Upload Media.
  4. A dialog box will open that allows students to select the folder they wish to save the file into (identified by their faculty member) and a selector box where they may drag and drop or select the file they wish to upload.
  5. Depending on the size of the file and the internet connection it could take some time to upload. Be sure to remain connected to the internet during this step. If your internet connection is unstable be sure to share this information with your faculty member so they are aware and can make adjustments as necessary.

Step 4: Sharing a Panopto Recording in Canvas (for Students)

This step will go over how students can embed a Panopto video into a Canvas Assignment or Discussion forum. Both of these items allow students to write in the Rich Text Editor window. For assignments, faculty should just be sure to request the “Text Entry” option to give students that editing functionality. The video tutorial below demonstrates what this would look like from a student perspective. (Updated 12/13/20 with new RCE editor functionality.)