Canvas @ Yale

PlayPosit: Overview

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After careful consideration and evaluation of our educational technology tools, Canvas @ Yale will no longer have access to PlayPosit at the end of Spring 2024.

Faculty and students will have access and can continue using PlayPosit through the end of the Spring 2024 term (May 31st), but PlayPosit will no longer be available for access or use starting Summer 2024. 

PlayPosit is an interactive web-based video platform that allows instructors to enrich video content with interactions including a variety of quiz question types, discussions, and other tools to increase learner engagement through participation. With advance question types and branching features, PlayPosit can add an engaging adaptive assessments to your course.

Why use PlayPosit?

The PlayPosit tool set is an overlay that can be used with Media Library video content, YouTube videos, or Vimeo videos (or a combination of these) to create learner "Bulbs" that students can watch and complete. PlayPosit is integrated with Canvas so that Bulbs can be linked to Canvas Assignments for graded activities, or with Modules / Pages for ungraded activities. 

PlayPosit provides a series of interaction types that can be injected into a video at specific points in time to help enhance the content, or to check student learning and comprehension.

Use Cases for PlayPosit

PlayPosit can be used in many ways. The following are just a few examples of common ways to incorporate PlayPosit into your course:

  • Increase student engagement with asynchronous lecture recordings by injecting quiz questions and supplemental content that reinforce the presented topic.
  • Utilize as a feedback tool to collect student understanding and comfort with prerecorded lecture content.
  • Pair with foreign language videos to create "translate the dialogue" style activities for practice and/or for a grade.
  • Facilitate asynchronous discussion boards overlayed on a video to encourage student collaboration.
  • Run an audience response system using the broadcast feature in person via Canvas, or broadcast feature remotely via Zoom.
  • Utilize an assignment type where students create the PlayPosit content / Bulb in a student-as-the-lecturer style activity.

How do I get started using PlayPosit in my course?

PlayPosit is a tool that is available in all academic courses. The tool can be used in coordination with a Canvas Assignment for grading purposes or can be used as a standalone activity / lecture by adding it to a page via the Rich Content Editor or as a Module Item. To learn more about how to use PlayPosit in your course, please reference:

What will my students see?

By default, students cannot fast-forward through the video and/or skip interactions. Instructors can change settings to modify that behavior.  

See the Playback section of the Building a Bulb help article (Vendor Guide).

When students access PlayPosit activities, they will need to go to the appropriate Canvas tool where you posted it.

  1. Once they are on the page / assignment / module where the PlayPosit interaction is located, the PlayPosit viewer will display.
    1. The student will need to click on the video player to begin the activity.
  2. When the player is activated, the video will start. When there is an interaction, a pop-out will appear.
  3. The student will need to complete the interaction to continue playing the video.

Depending on your implementation and settings, your students may see something a bit different than what appears below.

  1. When the student completes the bulb, they will see a summary of their submission (based on the settings you set when creating your bulb).

Below is an example of a summary of a bulb that had both graded and ungraded question types.

For more help with PlayPosit, please email [email protected].

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