Instructional Design & Technology

Camden faculty: contact IDT if you have questions about trying this tool!

PlayPosit is a tool available at Rutgers that allows you to turn video into an interactive experience for your students. The underlying videos can be ones you’ve made (and stored in Kaltura My Media) or those posted on YouTube or Vimeo. The interactions include quiz-type questions, space for comments, and more.

Our professors use PlayPosit primarily to create formative assessments, to confirm that students are understanding lecture material as they watch and listen. PlayPosit can also help promote accountability, where students earn points for watching and understanding your video content.

If you are comfortable working with technology and video, you may find PlayPosit a useful tool to make your video content more engaging for students.

Creating a PlayPosit ‘Bulb’ through Canvas Assignments

A bulb is a video overlaid with interactions

1. Identify the video to which you’ll be adding questions or interactions (from My Kaltura Media, YouTube, or Vimeo)
2. In your Canvas site, create a new assignment (from Assignments or Modules)
3. The assignment name might be something like “Module 5 Video Lecture,” as you are assigning the video to the student to watch—and to respond to your prompts

4. from within your new assignment settings, change Submission Type to “External Tool”
5. click the Find button and scroll down to choose ‘PlayPosit’

6. now click the link to Enter PlayPosit [Note: PlayPosit will open in a new tab of your browser; the previous tab will still display the Canvas assignment, which you will return to eventually]

7. in the PlayPosit editor, click Add New Bulb and then Enter the Designer

8. follow the 3 tabs across the top left of the designer page:

Video Segments

first select your video source: Kaltura, YouTube, or Vimeo

1. if you choose Kaltura, select one of your existing videos and click Done
2. if you choose YouTube or Vimeo, search to select video and click Done

Example: choosing Kaltura, searching to find FishTank video (click to select video, then click Done button)

Interactions

now add interactions [Note: this is a very basic set of instructions! See more options.]

1. on the right-hand side of the Designer window, watch or scroll your video until you get to the point where you want to add a question; pause playback
2. click the Add an Interaction button

3. choose the type of interaction, for example: Multiple Choice Question

4. enter your question text and possible answers; mark the correct answer; click Done

See Advanced options for this interaction:

5. continue to scroll through the video adding more interactions
6. after clicking Done for your last interaction, select the Review tab at the top

Review

1. change the Bulb Title if you wish
2. review Playback options and Privacy setting, which apply to the entire bulb

3. click Save Changes
4. you are done creating your new bulb!
5. you should see a message: “Bulb saved; close this tab and return to your LMS”

Back in Canvas

1. close the current browser tab and you should be returned to your Canvas ‘Edit Assignment’ tab
2. you should see your newly-created bulb in the list on your “Link Resource from External Tool” window
3. TRICKY PART: to select the bulb you want, click the round, red Canvas logo at the left of the bulb name

4. click Link to confirm selection

5. from the Configure External Tool window (that we left so long ago!), click Select

6. now you are back to editing your regular assignment settings in Canvas
   1. Make sure that Points is set to the points you assigned in the bulb (default is one point per question)
   2. Add a due date, if needed
   3. click Save at the bottom of the Assignment page
7. you can click Preview to try out your new PlayPosit assignment; remember to Publish the assignment when you are satisfied
8. or click Monitor to see student results or grade free-response type questions
9. Final Important Note (thanks, Ed): after publishing this PlayPosit assignment, you must use Student View in Canvas to see the video quiz as your students do (if you click on the link as professor, you will be given the Preview/Monitro options, as above