Kaltura in Blackboard
Table of Contents
Information for Course Instructors
Add Kaltura Content to Your Course
Rich multimedia content (e.g. videos, PowerPoints, movies, video quizzes, etc.) can be placed directly into your Blackboard course area. Content can be uploaded directly through Blackboard and posted or re-posted in any area of your Blackboard courses. Content uploaded through the Kaltura Media Space is also available for posting in your courses. Below you will learn how to post a video using the Text Editor in Blackboard or using the Build Content area.
Accessing Kaltura My Media from the Blackboard Homepage
Kaltura’s My Media is a private, personal library of media created or uploaded by the user. The My Media area allows instructors to manage (add, create, delete, edit, and publish) their media from one location.
Closed-Captioning
Machine captioning is performed automatically on all videos uploaded to Kaltura My Media (video.syr.edu or through Blackboard). This process uses automatic machine generated transcription (ASR) that recognizes the words spoken in your video and provides machine-based captions with 75-85% accuracy.
Live Captioning
While third party speech-to-text products, such as Otter.ai, exist for live-captioning, ITS recommends that professional captioning be used whenever an accommodation is requested or whenever our policy requires that an event has live captioning.
See Guidelines for CART and ASL Interpreting for more information.
Deleting Captions and/or Transcripts
Users can choose to delete captions or transcripts from media.
Allow Time for Deletion
Kaltura may take up to 24 hours to completely remove captions or transcripts from media files once deleted. If you delete a caption file, we also recommend that you also delete the corresponding transcript file, and vice-versa.
Requesting Captions in Other Languages
Media owners can request captions be processed for their videos in additional languages. Supported languages include Arabic, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Russian, and Spanish.
Download Media from Kaltura My Media
You can use the Kaltura MediaSpace (video.syr.edu) to download your previously captured and uploaded videos.
Viewing Media Analytics
Videos published using the Kaltura tools built into Blackboards can provide media owners and collaborators with analytics to better understand how viewers are watching posted media including number of plays, length of plays, geographic location, and devices used.
While Kaltura Analytics can help you gain insight into how course videos are used by students, we recommend against using analytics as a sole measurement for attendance or participation grades. Some computer settings like certain browsers, browser plugins, and virtual private networks (VPNs) can prevent Kaltura from gathering information about student views.
Kaltura analytics will not be accurate if you have pasted embed code for the video into Blackboard, posted an unlisted link to the Kaltura MediaSpace, or allow users to download the video from outside of Blackboard.
The instructions below show how to access Kaltura Analytics. Kaltura's documentation has details about the terminology used analytics pages.
Kaltura 360º Video
Kaltura allows 360 navigation on media, however, this is not automatic and requires tagging the entry as the player will only enable 360 navigation on entries that are tagged "360".
Accessing Zoom Recordings
If you use Zoom to make a cloud recording of your meeting, the Zoom recording will automatically be copied to your Kaltura My Media.
Please note, the video will not start converting in Kaltura until it has full uploaded in Zoom Cloud.
To access the Kaltura copy, please follow to steps above to view My Media in Blackboard or go to the Kaltura MediaSpace.
Kaltura Express Capture
Kaltura Express Capture allows you to record videos from your browser without installing additional software on your computer via Kaltura MediaSpace or via Blackboard. Recent updates include the ability to record your screen as well as your camera to create a dual-stream video where viewers can choose how the streams are displayed to them.
Express Capture is only supported on laptop and desktop computers. It is not available on mobile devices. For mobile devices, use the video camera option on your device and upload the content using the media upload option.
Additional instructions are available from Kaltura.
Students Using Kaltura Media
Kaltura media allows you to create, upload, and publish videos in your Blackboard courses. The information below will walk you through the basics of using Kaltura Media.
Add Media to Assignments, Discussions, etc.
You can add media (e.g. video responses, lecture videos, video assignments) directly to any course content area. This includes media you add or capture in real-time or media you added via the Media Gallery or web interface previously.
Using Kaltura Capture on a Mac
As macOS increases its privacy and security settings for Apple's operating systems, running Kaltura Capture on macOS may require enabling additional permissions. Please use the instructions in the link below if you are seeing errors while trying to record using Kaltura Personal Capture on macOS.
Kaltura How-To Instructions
Kaltura has created a wealth of informative self-guided training modules to help users learn how to best interact with the Kaltura interfaces.
- Kaltura Blackboard Building Block Essentials - Overview & Exercises
- Kaltura MediaSpace Essentials - Overview & Video Exercises
Need Training? Online Learning Services has multiple Kaltura Training Sessions available.
Getting Help
For support of the information above, staff and faculty should first contact their academic or administrative support personnel.