New and better
Odd Erik Pedersen, project manager for the introduction of Panopto at UiO, is pleased that the launch is approaching. – At UiO, we managed to quickly adapt to the Covid-19 lockdown and within a week we were fully operating from home, using a number of new tools such as Zoom, Teams, and Forelesningsopptak-2. Although great solutions in their own right, we had to switch between tools for different tasks. With the launch of Panopto, UiO will have a complete and user-friendly system that helps with the entire process of digital lectures: from recording to editing to playback on the student’s computer, Pedersen explains.
For all
Panopto may be used by anyone at UiO. However, Panopto’s benefits are best utilised in combination with Canvas, since the software automatically uploads lecture videos to the correct course folder. The videos then automatically become available to students and accessible from within Canvas. The Panopto project is also working on a similar solution for teachers who do not use Canvas.
Broad functionality, easy to use
Recording. Panopto is installed on PCs in all auditoriums and all seminar rooms, but you can also install Panopto on your office computer or UiO-laptop (including Macs) to make recordings at home or at the office. You can choose between recording your voice and the presentation slides and/or include a video of yourself along the presentation.
Upload. The uploading of recorded videos is done automatically to the selected course folder in Panopto, and the videos are made available to students from within Canvas.
Editing. You can make quick and easy edits of the video in Panopto through the browser with editing tools that allows you to cut out parts of the video and switch between video sources. This allows you to easily cut out video clutter or mistakes in your recordings instead of throwing the entire presentation away. And you do not have to worry about video compression or such after editing.
Captions.
Panopto automatically transcribes (audio to text) for all videos. However, the quality is not good enough to be used as closed captions without review. Therefore, some manual editing and quality control is needed (the quality is better in English than in Norwegian, and better in Norwegian “?stlandsdialekt” than in other dialects). UiO is working in collaboration with other institutions in the higher education sector to improve the quality of automatic Norwegian transcriptions.
Current universal design regulations define requirements for captions for video in most cases. UiO generally requires that all videos in Panopto which are made public have to include reviewed captions. Even with improvements to automatic transcriptions in Panopto, it would still require too much effort to provide captions for all lecture videos. Consequently, the exceptions for captions defined this spring for lecture videos continue to apply for the autumn semester of 2022. UiO’s universal design assessment can be found on this website (only in Norwegian).
Playback. The video player in Panopto is simple and intuitive and offers many functions. Students can choose whether to see the presentation slides or the lecturer as the largest element on the screen, and the presentation slides are indexed – meaning that the students can browse through recordings by choosing keywords from a table of contents or through captions. In addition to this, students can also adjust the playback speed and use the search bar to find and jump directly to specific parts of the video. They can and also adjust the speed of playback.
What's happens this autumn?
– This autumn, Panopto will be available as a new, all encompassing, lecture video tool, in addition to the other tools UiO already offer. Therefore, Forelesningsopptak-2, Kursopplasting, Zoom, and Cynap (as used by the Faculty of Law) may still be used.
The project group will use this autumn to gather experiences and adjust, so that the overall user experience can be improved. This includes proposals for good workflows, best practices and the use of more Panopto functionality. This must be in place before Panopto can replace other solutions.
For more information – see the Panopto website with instructions.
UiO Helpdesk also offers courses for Panopto in Norwegian.