Accessibility Week Day 1 Recap: How To Evolve Online Learning with Video (with Kaltura)

Noa Oron, Global Business Development Director at Kaltura spoke with Head of Customer Success Sara Ciskie at Rev. They talked about how educators can use video for teaching and how to make video courses more engaging.

Watch the Full Webinar Here

Webinar Transcript

Sara Ciskie: (00:02)
Hi, everyone. And welcome to our first webinar as a part of Rev’s accessibility week. My name is Sara Ciskie. I’m head of customer success here at Rev. My team’s job is to make sure that our clients are getting the full value out of all of Rev’s services. I’m joined by Noa Oron, director of global business development at Kaltura. She is going to be guiding us through some best practices of how to leverage video for your students, your learners, and to increase engagement, which is a time old question as long as pedagogy has been a thing, right? How do I get my students to engage better with my content? And an even more important and pressing question as we are in this pandemic and as we’re changing largely how students are learning, going from purely online classes to more of an online and hybrid model.

Sara Ciskie: (00:52)
So, with all that said, Noa, I’m going to turn it over to you.

Noa Oron: (00:55)
Hi, thank you.

Sara Ciskie: (00:58)
Sorry, one more quick thing before we start. I just forgot. We do have a question tab and we will be leaving some time open at the end for Q&A. So, feel free to send any questions in there. We’ll be keeping an eye on that.

Noa Oron: (01:11)
Yeah. All right. Thank you so much, Sara. And I can already see that there are questions. This is fun. And my first and foremost thing, before I even present myself is to please keep this dynamic and make it a discussion. We know that you can’t doing this physically and go on safe but you can ask questions by the chat and thank you, Sara, for scrolling through the chat and looking into the questions. So, please, if you have questions during this session, feel free to ask them. I will stop every now and then to answer some questions and we want to make it fun and engaging. And of course, if you guys have some things that you just want to share with us [inaudible 00:01:51] part of any educational organization and you see an example and you are like, “Whoa, this is exactly what we’re doing at my university or at my school,” please feel free to share that as well on the chat so we can create a dynamic discussion and provide some more examples from what you guys are already doing or what you guys would want to do or things that you’re hearing from your students and so on and so forth.

Noa Oron: (02:12)
So, without further ado, I’m going to kick off and let’s see if this is working. Okay All right. So, we named this From Division to Transition because we believe that up until now, we’ve seen, there’s the educational divisions that we respect and that we love, but this is a very transformational time. And this whole industry has been through a lot of transitions in the past few years, but then the recent COVID epidemic caused many different institutions to really fast forward that transition. And we wanted to give some examples and to really share with you how video can be used for teaching and for any other university needs, and I promise it will be some really cool examples as we move forward. So, just as far as the agenda here, I’m going to kick off with telling you about [inaudible 00:03:13] and what we do quickly, what changed since COVID-19 and what of these have we seen with regards to video usage, and then how can we use video in order to make learning [inaudible 00:03:27] more fun? How do we also make that tech go to work for us in use the analytics that we can get from video, both live and on demand, in order to gain more information and to make learning more fun for our students?

Noa Oron: (03:40)
And then lastly, we have some examples and I’m pretty sure that some of the people sitting here with us today are going to recognize their own universities or their own organizations within these examples. So, without further ado, I’m going to kick off by telling you what is Kaltura. So, Kaltura is the everything video company, we have been around since 2006, more than 500 employees. Our headquarters are in New York, this is where I am based, but we do have offices all over the world. London, Singapore, and the tech brains are mainly in Israel. We do have a very large community of developers and tech partners that we are working with. And we do work with 25% of the fortune 500 list and many universities and organizations in the education space. Now, the face that we are an everything video company, if we talk about specifically the education space, which we are really proud to be working with, everything video within education doesn’t only mean using video within the classroom. It also means using view across campus for social purposes, for remote and distance learning and not only in the classroom itself. How do we use video, for example, for libraries and other different folks and organizations that we deal with within the campus? And of course, how do we use video for campus events, which are also part of the learning experience?

Noa Oron: (05:09)
So, keep in mind that we’re not only going to be talking about the classroom itself, what we’re going to be talking about other features or other areas that we can use video within the campus. Some examples of some of our education customers, we work with most of the leading universities in the US. You can see here are some examples that even some names are familiar. We do also work with full ministries of education. This is something that we saw during COVID, a lot of requests coming from a whole city or country even, asking us to find a fast solution. How do we get education or how do we get content to all of the students within a city or within a whole country? This is by the way, one of the things that we did within the ministry of education in Israel. Now, I’m going to jump into the action items or the things that are really going to be interesting for you guys.

Noa Oron: (06:09)
And the main thing that I want to start with is the fact that video is no longer a nice to have. Something that we’ve seen in the beginning, people have just started using video for learning. Initially, we heard, “This is nice. We could add this. This is okay. It’s a nice to have. It’s a nice addition. It’s a nice feature.” What we’re seeing after COVID is that video is no longer that nice to have. It’s a necessity. It’s a must have. It’s something that you have to use either for communicating live with these students or for on demand education. Some videos that you will provide to them after the class is over, videos that you can use in order for them to learn in advance of the class and not use video for learning and not only reading something. You can add to the reading experience in order to prep students and I’ll show you some examples in a second, but it’s important to keep in mind that this is no longer a nice to have.

Noa Oron: (07:06)
Something that is probably obvious to all of us is that during COVID, live video usage went up. If you probably look at any of the data that was published anywhere, when it comes to Zoom, Microsoft Teams, all of the different tools that we all learned how to use really quickly, we knew that that video usage went up because all of us communicated that way. And by the way, this is how we’re communicating right now, we’re communicating live using video. But what’s interesting is that what you can see here in the graph is the usage that we saw when it comes to using video on demand during COVID. And what you guys are seeing here is that peaks following COVID in viewership of on demand video within all of our users. And of course, that includes all of the universities. There was this peak in viewership right as COBIT hit, because people were hungry for content, hungry for things to watch, not only by communicating live, but also watching it on demand.

Noa Oron: (08:19)
Video is here to stay. It’s not something that’s going to go away because of COVID. I just shared, I found these two quick data points. 82% of all content creation will be video by 2022 and 100 minutes per day is what the average person is going to watch by the end of 2020. Now, this is video. It’s not school. The problem here is that school is not Netflix. And it’s something to really keep in mind, because even if your students aren’t watching 100 minutes of video per day, it’s probably not educational content, it’s probably Netflix.

Noa Oron: (08:57)
And we wanted to use this conversation today and this discussion in order to jump into how do we not make it Netflix, because that would be really hard, but how do we make the video for education almost as engaging as Netflix for your students and how do we use that to our benefit? Just to… I’m sure this is something that you all probably know and you’re familiar with, asynchronous versus synchronous learning, but just to give you an example of how video can be used for both. When we talk about synchronous learning, and I’m going to mention these words a lot today, we talk about first of all the virtual classrooms, stuff that we do live and maybe live broadcasts of whole school events and large meetings or maybe a large lecture or something that is really big. And when we talk about asynchronous virtual learning, we could talk about content creation that happens outside of the classroom, recorded sessions, recorded lessons that would be recorded and the content management, what do we do with all of these videos afterwards? How do we manage them? How do we add different types of experiences on top of these recorded sessions? How do we make them more engaging?

Noa Oron: (10:09)
So, I’m going to be using asynchronous and synchronous learning a lot with regards to video. So, please, if you have questions and if anything is not clear as I’m giving you examples, let me know.

Sara Ciskie: (10:21)
Thank you for differentiating this and breaking it down into the different buckets, Noa. Have we noticed as far as how students want to absorb information and engage with their teachers, if they prefer one of these over the other?

Noa Oron: (10:37)
Yeah. So, something that is really interesting is that with regards to learning, you could imagine that students would really want to engage with educators or with their professors live, always live within the classroom environment and as it’s happening. But something interesting that we saw is that a lot of them actually prefer to learn on demand, meaning outside of the classroom. Why? Because, and I don’t want to offend anybody, but some of us have fast are fast talkers and some of us are slows talkers, and some of us are fast listeners and some of us are slow listeners. And what’s nice about the on demand environment is that you can watch the video in many different ways. So, if you watch a video, if I’m a fast listener but my professor’s a slow talker, I can just watch it on 2X. So, twice the pace of speech, and that really makes it fun for me as a student to watch it because I can quickly go through the content. Whereas, maybe if there was something that I don’t really understand, I want to slow it down. And this is something that you can do with video when you’re watching it offline, and we’re seeing a lot of interest in that, which is surprising.

Noa Oron: (11:50)
I want to talk a little bit about the experience of using video for education. Again, the classic thing that we know is that I’m sending you a video, you’re just watching it, or we have this conversation via the virtual classroom and it’s just me talking to you. You’re learning, I am teaching and that’s it. but something to really keep in mind is that the best way to use video for learning is to encourage this interaction, to enable access, to simulate the learning using video. Again, it’s not just a nice to have or an additional thing that I’m adding to my class, it’s actually something that I can use to simulate learning, to make learning more accessible for some students and to improve this interaction. Because video is something that is very natural for most students and again, the younger they get, the more exciting video is for them. And please feel free to stop me. I’m seeing that there’s a lot of activity in the chat, but please, guys, feel free to add questions. I’m sure that Sara is going to aggregate them and collect them if there are any questions once we dive in.

Noa Oron: (13:03)
So, how do we use video to be more engaging? There are many different ways, and I’m going to show you guys some tools. I’m going to kick off by talking about the virtual classroom. Now, not all of us have a virtual classroom. Some of us created that virtual classrooms for ourselves just because we had to, because of COVID. We use many different types of platforms. I’m going to give you some examples from the platform that we have at Kaltura, but I’m pretty sure that you can find the same exact tools, if not similar ones, within your own platform or whatever it is that you are using for doing classes or conducting classes virtually.

Noa Oron: (13:43)
So, some tools that can be really cool for engaging students, again, beyond that just me talking to you. First of all, if you have a whiteboard, use it. And only you can use it, but your students can use it too. On many different platforms, you can use the whiteboard to let your students draw on it, mark some things on it, draw a check mark next to what they think is interesting, just like you would bring them to the board and ask them to write something or to check something. We can do the same exact thing virtually, and it keeps them engaged because they have to do something, they have to draw on something. We can allow them to also allow them to draw on your deck. Some platforms allow you to present your deck, and again, I’m using the Kaltura virtual classroom as an example, but it allows you to present your deck but also let your students draw on that deck.

Noa Oron: (14:30)
So, when you’re creating the deck, in order to present virtually, think about that, “How do I add some pieces within my deck that will allow my students to draw something within that deck?” Live quizzes and polls with live results are also really important. Just like you guys love asking questions and chatting, in the same exact way you can ask these questions live and present a live quiz where a live poll to your students. Think about how interesting a discussion is when you start the discussion by asking the entire class-

Noa Oron: (15:03)
… the discussion is, when you start the discussion by asking the entire class, “How many times have you visited the zoo in the past year?” And they all raise their hands and you can see by show of hands who’s doing what and you can start the discussion from there. You can use the virtual environment in a lot more accurate way to not only look at the class and the you see by show of hands who is [inaudible 00:15:24] what, but actually get the live results as you’re asking it and know that 80% of the class visited the zoo versus 20 you didn’t.

Sara Ciskie: (15:31)
Just wanted to say, first of all, it’s so cool that we have these engagement tools and that we always think of video as, I think, more of a one way street. It’s cool to think of students being able to engage and actually draw on the whiteboard, write those kinds of things. Just wanted to do a quick pause, we’ve had a few housekeeping questions come in through the chat. Just so all are aware as this is a webinar format, the only voices that can be heard should be Noah’s and myself. So for anything, any questions that you may have, please feel free to leverage the questions tab, or just send them in through a chat. We are keeping track of what’s happening there as well.

Noa Oron: (16:10)
Thank you. I’m going to go on with the three last ones. Playing videos within your classroom is also something that you can do because we are communicating in video, but I can also play a video in my class. So I could play it for the rest of my class. This is another thing that keeps it slightly more engaging.

Noa Oron: (16:28)
Again, remember that Netflix example that we talked about, think of how cool it would be if you had a little snippet of a video. And I’m pretty sure you guys are already doing that within your classrooms already, sharing the video during the class, you can do that virtually too. It’s very easy either by sharing a screen or as you can see here, in this example, the [inaudible 00:16:50] virtual classroom allows you to upload something directly from YouTube or just pull it from your own private media library.

Noa Oron: (16:57)
And we’ll jump into what a video platform or your own private video platform means later on in the session. But again, many of the platforms allow you to do that too. Adding live notes is another thing that can help you engage. So the live notes, they don’t only have to be your notes, the teacher’s notes. It can be a live note that students can write in and participate in.

Noa Oron: (17:22)
You can, let’s say, choose two students every time who will be responsible for writing the notes for the rest of the class. And they will be writing the live notes and as they do, the entire class can see them. And you are creating this engagement part where these two students know that they’re going to have to write the notes or every time you’re telling the class, if you’re going to be choosing two students who will write the notes for the rest of the class. So they’re more engaged and they’re prepared and they know that they’re about to be chosen.

Noa Oron: (17:50)
Lastly, breakup rooms. Not all platforms allow you to do breakout rooms, but if the platform allows you to do that, it’s a great way to engage with students. You start the class, you break into smaller teams, each team works on something separately, and then you come back to the lodge room. Think about how sometimes it can be hard for us to do that in one room because you’re breaking the class into different tables, but they’re all having discussions. They might need to lock in each other.

Noa Oron: (18:20)
Maybe you need another room and you just don’t have that physically, the virtual environment allows you to do that. And it can be more engaging for your students because again, they’re not just sitting there listening, they’re actually being sent into another virtual room where they need to work together and come back. So there’s more interaction there. And of course you can let every group then share what they did with the rest of the class. Works just like a workshop.

Sara Ciskie: (18:47)
So if we could go back to that slide, Noah. So quick note on interactivity for this webinar itself, just so all are aware, we will be sending out the slides, so everyone has access to them. And we’ll also send out the webinar recording with captions on. I realize that a lot of folks aren’t seeing captions here right now. And then we did have a question come in through the chat. What would be a use case for drawing on this slide? So as far as if you are a teacher and trying to facilitate instruction, how would that benefit the students, the teacher in the learning situation?

Noa Oron: (19:22)
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. That’s actually a really great question. So when you’re creating a slide, let’s say that there is a slide with several choices on it. I don’t know if you can see here, it’s really small detail here, but there is a slide with three different options, three different buckets. When you tell all of your students, let’s say, instead of doing a poll, you tell all of them to now draw a check mark next to what is the most interesting bucket for you?

Noa Oron: (19:50)
Each one draws a check mark and you see this bulk of marks versus smaller or fewer check marks on other buckets. Then you can start a discussion using that. You can really take off and say, “Okay, I’m seeing that most of you drew your check marks next to this versus the other buckets. It’s just like, using the pool, just like creating a whole pool. This is one example.

Noa Oron: (20:15)
Another example is that you can ask of course a specific student to draw on a slide. Let’s say that you prepare the slide deck that has two plus two equals something, one plus three, four plus four. And then you can ask every student, you answer the first one, you answer the second one, you answer the third one and they all draw it on the whiteboard together. Again, just like you will be doing in a physical classroom, except that you’re doing this on top of your deck, on top of an already ready to go side or an existing slide that has these math questions on it.

Noa Oron: (20:52)
And again, you can find you can also use circles. Let’s say, draw something really simple and ask your students to add to that. If we’re talking about maybe biology or science, maybe if there is some sort of a flow chart that we’re trying to create, and we want the rest of the class to complete it, to add the missing parts, to maybe draw an X under what’s not working in the machine that I’m showing you them right now, or in the process that I’m showing them right now. There are many different ways and the more creative you get, the more fun it becomes. We’re seeing some really cool examples again, especially since [inaudible 00:21:30] and especially with eight ball. All right. Any other questions about it? [inaudible 00:06:36].

Sara Ciskie: (21:39)
No, I think we’re good to move on from this particular topic.

Noa Oron: (21:43)
Okay. And of course, we’ll leave some more time for your questions. [crosstalk 00:06:46].

Sara Ciskie: (21:47)
Actually. I’m so sorry. Just as I said that we had a question come through from Melissa. What is an example of a tool for live notes?

Noa Oron: (21:56)
Oh, so thank you Melissa for that question. An example for a tool for live notes with… I’m giving you an example using [Yandee 00:22:05] because they’re a platform because I don’t want to talk about other platforms, but because they’re a platform as it’s being used here, it allows you to click on notes at the top bar. And then you’ll see a little note sign that appears on the top right hand side of your screen. And it’s just like a white blank page. And you can give your students permission to write these notes.

Noa Oron: (22:28)
So let’s say you choose two students and you give them permission to write the notes and then they can type in from their own computer, but the rest of the class is going to see it. So it’s supposed to be visible, it’s something that you’re broadcasting for the rest of the class. You can do the same thing using a simple screen share and then add that screen share of the students to what the rest of the class is seeing while you are talking and that student is writing live and they can see their screen. They can see it, maybe even a Word Doc, a Word page, but it’s just, again, another thing that can be really engaging and of course, asking students afterwards to send these notes to the rest of the class or to send them to you, you can go over them and then you share them with the rest of the class. It just makes it slightly more engaging and you can choose a different student every time to do that. I hope that answers it.

Sara Ciskie: (23:24)
Awesome. And I think for the sake of time we can move on.

Noa Oron: (23:27)
All right, please keep these questions because I hope that I’ll go over this really quick. So we’ll leave some more time for questions later on. So how do we move on Ben from the synchronous to the asynchronous? How do we create a continuous learning experience and we keep again, the engagement going even after the class is over.

Noa Oron: (23:46)
So what I’m showing you here is an example of what a video platform could look like, and this is a private video platform that belongs to [inaudible 00:23:54] University. In this case where you can upload all of the different sessions, but you can also start from it. So you can see here that there are live sessions and there’re also recorded sessions and each student gets their own access. So it’s very safe and secure and they can jump into this platform. They can click here and join a live discussion, or they can click here and they can join something that already happened.

Noa Oron: (24:20)
So they have this one engaging platform where they can see all of their videos. And by the way, this is something that can be done also via your existing LMS. So whether you’re using Blackboard or you’re using anything similar to that, Canvas and so on and so forth, it can be included within that as well. And this is an example.

Noa Oron: (24:42)
So it’s way easier than you think. And I’m saying create your own video platform. You’re immediately thinking, “Oh, I need to create a whole other website. This is going to be a mess, but I’m already used to using Blackboard. What are we going to do?”

Noa Oron: (24:53)
This is an example of how it can be done within your LMS. So if your students are as already using an LMS, they’d be able to go there, but there will be a media gallery. And within this media gallery, again, I can include both the sessions that are about to start, so the live session that is about to start or has already started, or I can include stuff that was already recorded that they can go and they watch. By the way, you can also offload videos and I’ll show you in a second what that means, but this is where you start from.

Noa Oron: (25:23)
And just thinking about that, about including and adding video to something that they’re already used to, make it more fun and more exciting and not just assignment area can be a good way to start engaging with them and start using video [inaudible 00:25:37] to engage with them.

Noa Oron: (25:39)
So I’m going to start from the storyline of videos. The first thing is in the class, like we mentioned, we gotten used to recording our classes, recording our sessions, just like this. This session is being recorded I hope. Just like this session is being recorded, in the same exact way it would be recording your classes because you want it to keep it there. You want the students to be able to go back to that class. But there’s more to just recording it. You can either record a live class, a live session that you’re doing right now, or you can record it at home, record something for your students and have it available for them via an on demand platform or have it available for them on demand. And it doesn’t have to be related to the live class.

Noa Oron: (26:26)
So there are many ways to record your class. One thing that I really wanted to mention here is that there are many tools today that allow you to record both yourself and your screen. You can record two screens at the same time. Again, I’m using [Equator 00:26:41] example here, and this is Equator capture tool that allows you to record yourself and your deck such that your students would be able to get both. They’d be able to see both. And by the way, if you’re using the right platform, that platform is also going to allow you to upload your deck to it. So a deck is related or is attached or I mean, it doesn’t even have to be a deck. When I’m saying a deck it could be any material you can attach to the video and students can download that material, but it’s connected to the video. It’s not separated.

Noa Oron: (27:14)
And after you record those, how they watch really matters. They want it to be engaging. They want to be involved. They want to watch it in any way that they want, not just how you wanted it. And I’m showing you an example of the Equator player in this case, which allows you to upload both, to record both of your deck or your material and yourself, and in a lot of the students would watch it, this is how they will be watching it to switch between the screens. They can watch it and see a screen within a screen. They could see you on the large screen and then read that phrase here in small. They can see them side by side. They can switch between them and they can even click here and they can see your slides according to the video and how you’re advancing the slides. This is how they’re going to be seeing it as well.

Noa Oron: (28:01)
And they would even be able to search it. So if they saw something on your slide on this and that class, and they don’t remember exactly where it was, they can go back to the video and search through the slide in order to jump to that one slide that talked about something that they really need to go over again. So how they watch really matters and how you record really matters. And this is why recording both yourself and your deck is something that important. It is important and attaching your deck through an existing video is something that is important.

Noa Oron: (28:32)
Lastly, keep in mind that using a platform that allows users to view both on mobile and on web is really crucial because I mean, this is how most students watch videos today. And it is how a lot of us watch videos today. So keep in mind that you would want to have this available both on web and on mobile. Jumping-

Sara Ciskie: (28:55)
We had a quick question come in. I’m so sorry to interrupt. We just had a quick question come in. Where we use the term deck, would they be able to use PowerPoint or are there any best practices as to software leverage there? I know I’ve used PowerPoint as an educator in the past. Is that still usable for these kind of platforms?

Noa Oron: (29:17)
Absolutely. So the nice thing about recording is that you are recording a screen, so it doesn’t really matter what it is that I’m recording because I’m recording a screen. I can use a deck that is done via Google. That’s [inaudible 00:29:31] right now. It can be a deck that was done via PowerPoint. I’m recording the screen. So it doesn’t even matter which platform I’m using, which is really nice because I’m just recording what’s on my screen right now. And as far as attaching, the nice thing is that a lot of the platforms that are really advanced can allow you to attach any type of files that you can think of to your video. So right here, I can attach a PowerPoint deck, a PDF or any sort of file that I want, because again, it’s-

Noa Oron: (30:03)
PDF or any sort of a file that I want, because again, it’s an attachment just like you would attach it to a video or to an email, then in the same exact way you would attach any sort of file. I love PowerPoints, but I also love Google that I’m using right now. So it really depends on what you feel comfortable with because when you’re recording, you’re just recording this screen.

Noa Oron: (30:27)
All right. Is it okay? Can I jump into this one? I just want to make sure that we go through all the [crosstalk 00:00:32].

Sara Ciskie: (30:32)
We did have another question pop up, but in the interest of time, I think we could move on and then, Stephanie, we’ll come back to your followup question in the Q&A if that’s arriving.

Noa Oron: (30:42)
Thank you, Stephanie. Sorry. I’ll be quick. So engaging with video. What can I do with video on demand? So many different things. The first thing is many platforms allow you to add hotspots. Again, I’m using the Kaltura example because this is what we know. Adding hotspots on your video means that while a student is watching, there would be a text box that pops up in the middle and tells them, “If you want to read more, go here.” And it sends them to another URL, to another webpage, where they can read more or they can see more. Not only that, it can also send them to other videos within your platform. So again, if you have this media gallery where you have all kinds of videos, there was class number one and you’re class 10, and you’re reminding something to your students, you want to add that little hotspots that will allow them to go back to class number one and watch it again and see what we’re talking about if they missed it.

Noa Oron: (31:37)
So it’s something that keeps them engaged because they can click on many different things. They’re not stuck on, “Oh, my God. I don’t remember this thing that my professor just talked about and I don’t know where to get it and I’m kind of stuck. And I feel like I’m lacking, I’m lagging behind it. And it kind of keeps me anxious and disengaged.” So that’s one example. Adding quiz questions to videos is another very cool example. And what you’ve seen here is how that might look like. So while I’m watching a video, it will stop in the middle and I’ll get a question like that. And this is something that you don’t need anyone to create for you. One thing that Kaltura allows in this case is that we allow you to create this yourselves. So you really don’t need me or any production, fancy production, company. You can just create a quiz of your video.

Noa Oron: (32:25)
In the sake of time, I’m not going to show you exactly how you do this, but you create the questions. You add different answers. You can add a hint and you can even add a scoring system to this that shows to the students, or maybe it doesn’t show it to the students, what their score was after they watched this quiz. This could be an assignment, if you give them as class prep. We’re seeing a lot of educators using this specifically as something, again, instead of reading or maybe on top of reading. There’s the reading, and then also watch this video and answer the quiz questions in the middle. So you can see and you can even track that afterwards and see how did students answer to this video quiz. Did they answer correctly? Or not? Maybe it could be part of how you’re grading them afterwards. So this can be a very useful, again, engaging tool for class prep, or also maybe even post-class.

Sara Ciskie: (33:20)
Hon.

Noa Oron: (33:20)
Yeah.

Sara Ciskie: (33:21)
Quick clarifying point, when we say the word link hotspots, that’s referring to just external links, right?

Noa Oron: (33:26)
Yes. Absolutely. Sorry. Thank you. The hotspot itself, it looks like a text box that appears, but it could send them to external links, it could send them to your link within your platform. It really is. And it can even just be texts. it can even just be a piece of text that you’re adding on top of the video that says, “Please pay attention. This is really important or will not appear in the exam.” It’s something that students would really appreciate it. How can you engage students with reflection points? This another thing that is part of this quizzing tool in a very similar way. A question can just be something for students to reflect on.

Noa Oron: (34:05)
So it doesn’t have to be a multiple choice. It can also be an open-ended question, where you’re asking students to reflect, to say what they think. You’re creating a discussion. And then all of the data that comes from that goes to your end and it will appear on the indicator or the teachers backend, and you’d be able to see all of the answers of the students from your class in advance of the class itself. So then you can come prepared to class and say, “One, two, three. You had really interesting answers to the question that we asked on the video. Can you please share with the class?” So you’re saving time on that. You already know what they’re thinking. You’re getting them engaged in advance of the class and you know exactly what their answers were in advance of the class.

Noa Oron: (34:50)
Video creation assignments, that’s my favorite. I’m showing you an example here. This is actually real from a real customer. I hope [inaudible 00:34:58] recognizing. And you can see that there’s a… In this case, this was a leadership skills class and the professor provided the students… They asked the students to create a video of themselves as an assignment, then to share it with their classmates, because this is another thing you can do with video. Your classmates need to respond on it and getting feedback from them. You, as a professor, of course, can grade them on that. And it just creates this even more interactive feeling of, “I’m not only watching video that was given to me. I’m also creating it myself as part of my assignment.”

Noa Oron: (35:36)
So it’s not only about a written assignment. It’s also about video. And of course, when it comes to leadership skills, for example, or comes to these types of topics, it’s extremely relevant and it makes them more engaged and they can engage with other classmates. Any questions by the way [crosstalk 00:00:35:52]?

Sara Ciskie: (35:54)
So I’m going to do a quick time check. We have about five minutes before we wrap up into Q&A session. We’ve had a few questions come in to chat. I see you guys. We’re going to be saving those for the end. I know I will just need to wrap up in about the next five minutes for the Q&A.

Noa Oron: (36:07)
All right. So I’ll be extremely quick. Two more quick example. One more quick example is interactive videos. Yes, you can create it yourself. It looks like something that has to be really complicated. Trust me, it’s not, because I can create them myself, that means you can create them too. What these are, are actually kind of choose your own videos where you can take different videos, create different paths, and again, just like a video quiz, this could be a video journey. Extremely relevant for Gen Z. The younger the audience is, the more fun they’re having with these types of tools. It allows you to click on the screen itself and simply choose where you’re going to go next, what are you going to do. And again, you can get the analytics around these. So you can actually grade your students according to what they did with this video. It could be an assignment, even though it’s really fun, but it is an assignment.

Noa Oron: (36:55)
The goal here is not to create an empty class of course, but to create a hybrid solution. We know that a lot of students come to class with their laptops, with their computers. Students are participating in class, but then can also use video after their class is already done. So it’s really important for me to emphasize this point. This is not our goal. Lastly, we talked about more events within the schools and more environments. Engaging with family and friends via events is something that we’re finding a lot of schools to be doing, especially again, in recent months. We’ve seen a lot of commencement ceremonies done online and a lot of parents and family who wanted to be part of that as well, and they wanted to be part of the graduation. And sometimes parents and friends and family cannot come to graduation, physically and they actually want to watch it.

Noa Oron: (37:43)
Using a webcasting tool or using a platform that will be only for school events is something that can really make that happen easily. You create an agenda of school events, as you can see right here, that is not only about the commencement, but also other events that happen in school. Maybe you want specific parents or the specific class to come and watch something else that the class is doing right now. You can choose which parents are going to be allowed to enter, because, again, this is your private platform that you’re creating here. You can allow specific parents to be able to enter and watch the kids. So it’s not something that is open and that is on YouTube and everybody can see or a link that is open and everybody can see, which is not the most secure thing to do, but it’s something that is secure and it is kept within your own platform and you’re providing specific parents with access to this platform.

Noa Oron: (38:35)
And again, I would love [inaudible 00:38:36] to hear more information. If you have questions afterwards, I’ll share all my details with you and share more information about that. Lastly, quickly going over analytics, tracking engagements within a synchronous environment. Many tools today, and again, I’m sharing the Kaltura classroom tool, allow you to track whether a student is looking at the screen or not. This is very, very simple and it is done… I mean, if I’m the professor here, I can see on my participant list that in this case, Leron is not looking at the screen, because we see this little I and it’s with his image. And this means that he’s actually looking at a different tab. And this also is being tracked and I can see it later on when I’m looking at the statistics of my class. I can not only see the name or the email and when did they join and when did they leave, but also their attention span. So were they looking at me? Or were they looking at Facebook?

Noa Oron: (39:29)
And when it comes to asynchronous learning, again, I mentioned this several times during this session, but to just quickly go over the different types of analytics that you can get about video and how that can help you, you can get information about the most watched videos on your platform. Did your students actually watch them all the way through? Maybe they stopped in the middle. I don’t want to say that you’re boring, but if they did that, maybe you are. Where did they stop exactly in the video? Where did they pause and maybe go back and watch again? Maybe this means that this part is not clear. And if you’re seeing the peak and you’re seeing that all of your students watch the video and stopped at a very specific point, maybe that is not clear and it’s worth going over again during the class itself.

Noa Oron: (40:13)
Did they click on the hotspots? If you’re seeing that all of them on a hotspot and went back to class number two, maybe it means that you need to go over that material again from class number two. How did they answer the quiz questions of course? If they all answered something incorrectly, again, maybe this is something that is not clear. Or how did they engage with the interactive videos? Did they all choose one specific path or choose a different one? Maybe that means that the entire class thinks in one specific way and doesn’t even look at another option. Maybe it’s something that you need to go over in class and open their eyes to.

Noa Oron: (40:48)
Some real world examples, because I promised that. Again, if there’s anyone here from Boston University, I would love to hear your feedback about if you used My Media. Boston University does have their own My Media space where they share all of their videos. I couldn’t get access to everything of course, because I’m a guest, but if you are a student from BU, you can sign in and you get access to a lot more videos. They share basically everything from what I saw over there and they can divide it into different channels, and of course, commencement ceremonies using a webcasting tool.

Noa Oron: (41:24)
New York University, I know that there’s some people here from NYU. We love you guys. They use Kaltura to publish and distribute public and private basic academic content. So again, as I mentioned, some people have access, some people don’t, via their NYU stream video portal and they use it within their LMS as well. They’re using [inaudible 00:00:41:45]. I’m not going to share this entire video with you, but NYU also love it just [inaudible 00:41:52] to enrich their videos posted on the Kaltura platform and at least from what they’ve told us, they’ve seen incredible uptake in engagement since the implementation. And when I say engagement, I mean, all of the tools that we talked about earlier. They’re treating this as their own private YouTube, and we love that very much and it’s very cool to see how they’re engaging with video.

Noa Oron: (42:20)
I’m showing these two quick examples here, but there’s so many more universities that are leveraging video and creating their own platforms of video for many different purposes. I mean, in this case, it could be the library that is sharing some content from the library. They have their own video portal. Or it can be kind of the school news type of platform, as you can see here at [inaudible 00:42:44] where you can see news from things that are happening in the school videos that students are maybe shooting of other students or other projects and sharing it on the platform as there’s more student involvement in this whole creation process, which is a learning process in and of itself. And I mean, the list goes on and on, but I want to leave some time in [inaudible 00:43:08] for more questions.

Sara Ciskie: (43:13)
Well, Noa, you are landing right on time there. So we have had a few questions come through. So I’m going to kind of read through some of these. So one, when we are on the slide with the web and mobile interfaces and we were talking about slide presentations and showing them simultaneously, we had a question, what’s the difference between web and mobile from the teacher’s transmission point of view?

Noa Oron: (43:39)
So, I mean, actually there is no difference because when you are recording… I mean, in you’re recording, you can record it on your desktop and you use web. But what I meant here is that the platform itself needs to have the capability to also present these on mobile. This is something that usually media supervisors would take care of or the media team at your school would take care of, but you as a teacher can really request that and make sure that it is possible to watch these videos also on mobile and not only on web.

Sara Ciskie: (44:19)
Yeah. I remember when we were talking earlier, you mentioned that we’ve seen a huge spike in mobile usage, which is so crazy, because I traditionally think about viewing things on a computer, but more and more students are looking at on their phones. Right?

Noa Oron: (44:32)
Yeah. Again, just like I would be looking at my phone to use social media, in the same exact way, when I’m watching a video on social media, I can also quickly log into my school app and watch the latest class while I’m on the subway or something like that on my way back. I mean, we’re all kind of getting used to walking things on our phones. Why not use it for education as well?

Sara Ciskie: (44:55)
Absolutely. And then we had two different questions around the hotspots page, if we could go back there. So-

Sara Ciskie: (45:03)
… if we could go back there, which makes sense. There’s so much possibility in each of these bullet points that you can creatively implement as a teacher. So, in terms of how people go about making these, I think for a lot of educators, when I was teaching, I never used things like this, where could we go to learn about how to make these kinds of tools like quizzes or hot spots or any of these?

Noa Oron: (45:25)
So, where can you go to learn? The only place that I can direct you to is, first of all, my personal inbox here. So, you can simply shoot me an email. I’d be more than happy to share some of these school links with you about these tools. You can also request a demo quickly via this link. We are sharing the deck afterwards, so please feel free to either do it here or please shoot me an email, a personal email. I promise you that I’m going to address each and every email and take a look. If not, kind of send you over to some of our education experts depending on the level of education where there is … all of our universities or even ed tech.

Sara Ciskie: (46:14)
That’s awesome. Perfect. When we’re leveraging the hot spots, does the video continue playing in the background if a hot spot pops up, or does it pause so that the student can take a moment to actually go and look at the collateral that’s being presented?

Noa Oron: (46:27)
It is absolutely … That’s a really great question. The two different ways … So, for hot spots, the video will continue showing, but you can choose how long working hot spots stay there. The hot spot can be there for the entire length of the video, or it can be for a shorter period of time. If you want the video to really pause, I always recommend using note reflection points or using a pause or a question that simply says it. Again, it doesn’t have to be a question. It could be reflection point that says, “Go to class, number one. Take a look. Go to here. Take a look. Take a moment to review the material that we covered last week. Now come back.”

Sara Ciskie: (47:09)
Awesome. Then we had a couple of questions about the analytic tab or the analytics tool, if we could go back there. One person was wondering, what tool is this? How can we see this kind of viewership here? Then another question was, from Danny was, “How accurate is the view tracking between tabs?”, which refers I think more to the iTracking. Right? How can you tell what someone’s looking at there?

Noa Oron: (47:32)
In this specific example of the preferred virtual classroom is web-based. What’s nice about it is that you don’t need to download anything. I can simply send you a quick … sorry, a link to my virtual classroom. You click on it, it will open a tab on your web browser. What students usually don’t know is that you can track it. While they’re watching it on the web, if they go to a different tab just like when you open up Chrome, you’ve got different tabs. Right? You’ve got that website you were reading on, and you’ve got Facebook, and you have your own virtual classroom. If your student’s going to another tab and is clicking on Facebook, you’d be able to see that. So, basically it tracks once I click on a different tab. This is how it tracks the different tabs.

Sara Ciskie: (48:22)
Makes sense. Then that analytics tool, is that part of the Kaltura platform?

Noa Oron: (48:27)
Yes, absolutely. Both of them are. This one is connected to all our, again, live sessions and live classrooms. The analytics tool that you have seen here is connected to our asynchronous learning to the VOD part. It is definitely configurable, something that is really important to keep in mind. I mean, if you don’t want to see the most wanted video, if you don’t want to see different things or different pieces, you can exit out of them and you can change it around. So, it really depends on how a specific university likes to use this.

Noa Oron: (48:59)
Of course, all of this can be integrated in an existing LMS. So, the data about the video will be connected or will come together with other pieces of data that you’re getting from your learning management system.

Sara Ciskie: (49:15)
Yeah. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Absolutely. Then we did have a question about as far as more things being viewed on mobile, more students looking at content on mobile. Does that mean that in terms of best practices that we need to keep screens simpler? Which might make sense, right? You can probably read a little less on a smaller screen than you could a bigger screen. Right?

Noa Oron: (49:37)
Yes.

Sara Ciskie: (49:37)
What are best practices in terms of content creation and bearing the mobile viewer in mind?

Noa Oron: (49:43)
I think that this is a crucial question. It’s very important and something we’re learning as we go. I mean, I would say that using something or just looking for that specific slide, using a player that includes all of these activities on it or it’s in mobile is slightly harder. Still, if there is one thing that people like to do while they’re watching something is to also click on it, even it’s on mobile, is to be able to do this and that and to change things around and to switch them around.

Noa Oron: (50:19)
I would say, if students are watching things on mobile, one thing that is not as comfortable is to watch long videos on mobile. So, I would say encourage your students to, if they’re watching something long, if they’re watching an entire recorded class, try to watch in on a big screen just because it’s more comfortable. If it’s short snippets, if it’s a short video, if it’s, let’s say, a quick message from your professor, that you just upload it and you wanted to tell your students something, that it’s something you can watch on video usually are not the actionable videos.

Noa Oron: (50:57)
The actionable videos, we want them to actually be assignments. It just encourages students to try to watch it on web. That is different from just watching something short on mobile just because it’s not as convenient. It’s becoming cooler, but it’s not as functionale.

Sara Ciskie: (51:12)
Absolutely. Thanks for the awesome question, Stephanie.

Noa Oron: (51:15)
Yeah, guys, thank you so much. These are really, really good questions.

Sara Ciskie: (51:19)
Quick question from Kathy about that Kaltura platform itself. “Is this something that an individual professor, individual faculty member will be able to purchase? Is this only available on a university or a department wide level?”

Noa Oron: (51:33)
Amazing question. We do this on a university or department wide level, but if you are a professor who is really interested, we can definitely try and create a trial for you, specifically with the virtual classrooms. We would love to create a trial for you so you could just start using it with your own students for virtual communication. Then later on, if this is something that they like, we would love to discuss this with the department or with the university as a whole and see if we can create something for everyone altogether.

Noa Oron: (52:14)
So, I hope that answers the question. When it comes to specific trials, we can create virtual classroom trials usually being not platform, the whole platform trial or a VOD platform trial for a specific teacher simply because it’s slightly harder. But we can definitely create trials for whole departments. All we need to do is to get in touch with the person responsible for media.

Sara Ciskie: (52:38)
Makes sense. Then a question from Robert. I know that this is top of mind for your team, that you guys get questions about this pretty frequently. “In terms of music lessons, there tends to be a bit of a gap between the actual presentation or the performance and the person on the receiving end who’s listening to it. Is there any way that we can reduce latency for music teachers who are teaching synchronously on the platform?”

Noa Oron: (53:10)
This is something … Was it … Who was that? What was the name?

Sara Ciskie: (53:14)
I’m sorry, that was Robert Brians.

Noa Oron: (53:16)
Robert, your question has appeared in so many different webinars so far. You have no idea. I can tell you that some music teachers are using our virtual classroom for live sessions, live classes and students playing at the same time. There is some sort of latency. I mean, it’s something that exists on almost any platform, which makes it harder. We know that it makes harder for music teachers. So, it is slightly harder. Sometimes you have to give that up to some extent.

Noa Oron: (53:56)
We did do a whole webinar and sessions on our platform with actual artists. I would love to put you in touch with the guy that actually does that and only that if you reach out to me. We can give you some tips, very useful tips actually, on how to do this live. Another quick tip for music teachers is that you can use VOD for that exactly. I mean, you can use on-demand viewership exactly for that, because if you go and you ask each one of your students to record themselves playing something, you can then go and edit that. That would be a different editing platform, but you can do it on any simply editing platform, iMovie, anything that already exists on your computer and simply put these together and add them into that one video that includes all of the different pieces and all of the students playing.

Noa Oron: (54:56)
Then you create a video out of that and you upload it to the school platform or you share it with your students, which can be pretty cool. So, just a tip. This is what we’re hearing from some of the music teachers we’re working with.

Sara Ciskie: (55:10)
Awesome. Thank you so much for that info. I know we’re right about at time. I want to be respectful of the rest of everyone’s day. Quick wrap-up question, if there was one piece of advice that you’d give this crowd of lovely folks, what would it be?

Noa Oron: (55:26)
It would be that one thing that I think I already mentioned, it’s not about either/or. It’s both. Even when we go back to physical classrooms, keeping video in mind and using video is something that you can do even with the physical classroom. It’s not one replacing the other, it’s something that will happen together. You will only grow and you will make it more engaging and fun for your students to be part of your class if there is video involved and if there is engaging video involved.

Sara Ciskie: (55:59)
Amazing. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Noah. This has been super informative. I’ve learned a lot, and I know I technically work in the space here. Thanks to everyone who joined us. We will be having an exciting talk around the lunch hours, around this time every single day this week. Please join us for the rest of the webinars. I’ll be there for most of them. So, thanks everyone for joining. We’ll see you all around.

Noa Oron: (56:22)
Thank you guys so much.