For many universities, the LMS is the online hub for managing the student learning experience. It provides faculty with tools for course management, communication, and student assessment, and students with access to syllabi, course materials, assignments, assessments, and increasingly, video. As video has become fundamental to both online and on-campus courses through recorded lectures, flipped classroom videos, and recorded student assignments, the integration of learning management systems and video platforms has become a critical element of university IT.

At Panopto, we’ve built a video platform along with free, turnkey building blocks that enable universities to weave video into every aspect of the LMS experience — announcements, assignments, discussions, and more.

Today, we’ll discuss how Panopto integrates with Instructure Canvas, one of the fastest-growing learning management systems in higher education.

Panopto Makes Video Part Of The Canvas LMS

Among teachers, Canvas is known for its ease of use and flexibility. Among students, it’s been referred to as “Facebook for my class.”

With Canvas, Instructure has taken an approach to the learning management system that embraces pedagogical adaptability through open APIs and third-party apps, ease of use through features like SpeedGrader, and mobile access through iOS and Android support. Over the years, Panopto has partnered with Instructure to ensure that the integration of our video content adds to the value and intuitiveness of Canvas, making lecture recordings, flipped classroom videos, and recorded student assignments feel like a core part of Canvas itself.

Panopto and Canvas for Faculty and Students

For teachers and students, Panopto’s integration with Canvas makes it easy to capture and embed videos as well as browse, search and watch video content from any device.

Record and Live Webcast
Whether it’s a lecture, a flipped class “microlecture”, or a student assignment, Panopto allows Canvas users to capture new videos directly from within the LMS. With just two clicks, professors and students can launch the Panopto recorder and automatically log in using their existing Canvas credentials. Panopto’s recording software will automatically configure itself to record into the course that was being viewed in Canvas, and by default, Panopto will be set to record the presenter’s webcam and the contents of their screen.

Faculty who need to live stream their lectures for distance learning students can simply click one additional checkbox in the Panopto recorder for Windows, and their webcam, screen contents, and other selected video sources will be broadcast live.

For students, recording video assignments is a snap. With Panopto’s dropbox functionality, students can securely submit webcam video recordings, screencasts, and more to a course folder where the professor can review them and provide feedback.

Upload Existing Videos
For pre-recorded videos that were captured using another application, Canvas users can simply drag-and-drop them into Panopto’s web-based uploader. Typically in a matter of minutes, the videos will be uploaded, converted for viewing on any laptop, tablet, or smartphone, and accessible through Canvas LMS.

Search Inside Video Content
When it comes time to review course materials in prep for a lab, quiz, or final exams, Panopto makes it as easy to search video content as it is to Google the web.

Using Panopto’s Smart Search video content search functionality, Canvas users can search across all of their course-related videos and inside the content of every video for any word spoken or shown. Then in one click, users can jump to the precise moment in the video where the word is mentioned. If an archeology professor mentioned “subsoil excavation” in a lecture three weeks ago, or included the words “diagnostic artifacts” on a slide, students can fast forward right to the point in the video where these terms occur in a matter of seconds.

Watch and Interact with Videos
Panopto’s integration with Canvas was built so that course-related recordings could be accessed anywhere from within the LMS. Videos can be embedded in any editable page simply by clicking on a Panopto button in the Canvas editor and selecting the video(s) to be included.

From the embedded video player, students can also launch the full, interactive Panopto video player to access table of contents, captions, notes, and the ability to search inside the recording.

Mobile Recording, Searching, and Watching
With students and faculty doing more coursework on smartphones and tablets, Instructure has made mobile access fundamental to Canvas LMS. To provide a great video experience to these Canvas users, Panopto’s integration with Canvas extends to mobile devices as well.

Using the freely-available Panopto Mobile app for iOS and Android, students and faculty can log in to Panopto using their existing Canvas email and password. From there, they can browse course videos, search across their library of recordings and inside video content, and watch videos anywhere.

On iPhones and iPads, Panopto Mobile also enables Canvas users to record and upload course videos. This makes it possible to easily capture student assignments in HD, or record flipped classroom videos at home or in the field.

Panopto and Canvas for Admins

For IT administrators, Panopto simplifies the deployment and maintenance of cloud-hosted and on-premises integrations with Canvas. Support for single sign on, batch course provisioning, and role mapping reduce the effort typically involved in connecting video capture and learning management systems.

Batch course provisioning
With one mouse click, administrators can connect all of the courses within Canvas to their associated video recordings. For universities who have rolled out Canvas and Panopto campuswide, or for those who rely on Canvas and Panopto for hundreds of courses, batch provisioning dramatically reduces the time it takes to connect their LMS with their video content management system.

Single Sign-on
With SSO, teachers and students aren’t hassled with two separate sets of login credentials for their LMS and their video recordings — and admins aren’t hassled with the need to manage two separate sets of login credentials.

Role mapping
Panopto also makes it easy to configure custom mapping between roles in Canvas (such as TeacherEnrollment, TAEnrollment, DesignerEnrollment) and roles in Panopto (such as video Creator and Viewer). This ensures that Canvas users have the appropriate authorization within Panopto to record, upload, live broadcast, and watch videos.

Find Out More About Panopto

If your academic institution currently uses Canvas, and is looking for a video platform that integrates seamlessly and complements Canvas’ ease of use, contact us to request a free trial today.