Videos

Best Practices

  • Multiple short videos are better than one long one. Try to stay under 10 minutes.
  • Record in a quiet space and use a microphone or headset, if possible. Do a test recording first, to make sure you can record and upload.
  • Your presentation doesn’t have to be perfect. Your students can benefit from seeing you as a real person!
  • Screencast videos record your computer screen with voice narration. You can use slide presentations, demonstrate Canvas and other platforms, and create step-by-step walkthroughs.
  • Upload to My Media or YouTube and embed or link to video media in Canvas, rather than uploading video files directly to Canvas as attachments.
  • For accessibility purposes, all videos should be captioned. My Media and YouTube have captioning tools that are useful, but you should plan to edit the automatic captions to ensure a high level of accuracy. For full accessibility, it’s also helpful to describe any images used during your presentation and read/narrate text on the screen.

Tools for Creating Videos

Taft College provides several tools and productivity platforms that faculty, staff, and students can use to create and share videos, including Canvas Studio, YouTube, Zoom, and Powerpoint (Office 365). Please note that students can use Canvas Studio, YouTube.

  • Canvas Studio
    Canvas Studio is built into Canvas and provides the most streamlined and secure process for screen and webcam recording, storing and sharing videos, as well as minimal editing tools.
  • YouTube

    If you want to use YouTube as your primary space for video storage and sharing, consider creating a YouTube Brand Account, so that you can share/manage access with your personal account, colleagues, et al. If you decide to use YouTube to store videos, please remember that Taft College cannot help you access, edit, or unpublish videos in YouTube if/when you no longer have an taftcollege.edu account. If that feature is important to you, please store your videos in My Media.

    Please reach out to the DIstance Education department at Taft College if you have any difficulties.

  • Zoom

    Another option is to record your presentation on Zoom. You can read more about recording a Zoom meeting on their website.

    • When recording on Zoom the video image quality can be significantly lower than when recording through a program like My Media, because it’s recording over the internet.
    • Videos are deleted from Zoom’s cloud platform after a period of time. Sharing videos from Zoom’s cloud storage is a solution if you don’t intend to use the recording past the current term.
    • If you are using Zoom to record class meetings, please remember that you cannot use any recordings with students outside that section/term, unless you have written permission from all of the students involved.
  • Recording Slide Presentations

    Best Practices

    • Avoid course/semester/section/date-specific info, so you can reuse easily.
      Keep the slides simple with large text. Use high contrast (e.g., dark text on a white background). Minimize distracting visuals.
    • Consider writing a script to help you focus on educational content and eliminate redundancies.
    • Try to limit each slide to one main point. Lead with the main idea, so students can put the information into context.
    • Make images large and describe them as part of your narration. Remember that students may be viewing your videos on small phone screens.


    Microsoft PowerPoint
    PowerPoint can be used to create a screencast video with audio recording or an optional webcam insert. The process varies depending on the version of PowerPoint that’s installed and whether you’re using a Mac or PC. If you’re using Microsoft 365 in the desktop app on a Mac or PC, you can use the PowerPoint Cameo feature to insert a recording of your webcam directly on a PowerPoint slide. On previous versions you can record PowerPoint video or audio narration on each slide individually or on your presentation as a whole.

    Create your PowerPoint slides.

    1. Add individual audio on the slides or Record Slide Show to add audio, slide transitions, and screen annotations.
    2. When you save the file, make sure you are saving as a PPTX. Older file formats may not preserve the audio.
    3. File > Export > Create a video. Please follow Microsoft’s instructions for your version of PowerPoint: Turn your PowerPoint presentation into a video.
    4. When your video is saved, upload the video file to YouTube or My Media for captioning and sharing in Canvas.
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