Panopto and Online Learning Resources at UCLA School of Law: A Comprehensive Tutorial Guide
The UCLA School of Law is committed to providing its students with the best possible learning experience, whether in person or online. To this end, the school utilizes a variety of online learning resources, including Panopto and Bruin Learn (Canvas). This article serves as a comprehensive guide to these resources, with a particular focus on how they are used to support legal education. We will explore the functionalities of Bruin Learn, the principles of multimedia learning as they apply to online learning objects, and best practices for creating accessible and effective instructional videos.
Transitioning to Bruin Learn
Bruin Learn is UCLA's enterprise-wide Learning Management System (LMS) based on Canvas by Instructure. The UCLA School of Law began migrating course pages from MyLaw to Bruin Learn in the 2022-2023 school year. Bruin Learn requires your UCLA Logon ID, the user credentials furnished by Central Campus IT Services (ITS), in order to log in, after which a dashboard displaying cards for each of your courses should appear.
For those new to Bruin Learn, UCLA provides several resources. A quick-start handout is available to guide you through using Bruin Learn for your UCLA Law courses. Additionally, a Collaboration Site hosted on Bruin Learn contains documentation and step-by-step guides managed by the Bruin Learn Center of Excellence (COE).
It is important to stay informed about specific dates when courses are populated in Bruin Learn and when students are imported into the course. The Bruin Learn Training and Office Hours page links to a Google Calendar containing all upcoming training sessions and Office Hours hosted by the Bruin Learn COE. UCLA's agreement with Instructure includes 24/7 chat and phone support, ensuring assistance is always available.
Effective Communication within Bruin Learn
Announcements are the recommended way to communicate with students within a Bruin Learn course. After you press the +Announcement button, you will get a screen where you can input a Topic Title and an editor window to type in your message. It is crucial to understand that students can customize the manner and frequency with which they receive notifications from Canvas. Therefore, it is a good idea to place a statement about your communication expectations in your syllabus.
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The People section of the course menu displays a list of users associated with your course. This can be used to create a list for communicating with students outside of the Canvas platform. To run a Class Roster report, click on New Analytics on the right side of your course home page, select the Reports tab, and click the Run Report button next to Class Roster.
Bruin Learn also allows instructors to add an unofficial user to their course site without assistance from system administrators, using the People section of the course menu. Campus provides instructions for this process. Zoom is integrated into Bruin Learn (Canvas), allowing upcoming Zoom meetings to show up in the Bruin Learn calendar. Bruin Learn also contains a feature to create Office Hours that show on your course's calendar, where students can book time to speak with you.
Leveraging Law Library Resources
The law library reference team can create customized versions of the Law Library Resources page with resources for specific courses, such as recommended immigration law resources for an immigration course or recommended health law resources for a health law course. These resources can be invaluable for students seeking in-depth knowledge in particular areas of law.
Principles of Multimedia Learning for Online Learning Objects
Creating effective online learning objects, such as tutorials and videos, requires an understanding of how people learn from multimedia. Research suggests that learning is a process of sense-making in which people attend to information, mentally organize it, and integrate it with their prior knowledge. Instructors cannot simply present material and expect learners to absorb it; rather, effective teaching encourages and supports the sense-making process. Instructional strategies, such as highlighting and organizing essential content, scaffolding complex material, and providing opportunities for practice and feedback, all support learning. Affective elements also play a role in learning; instructors should create a welcoming environment and support student engagement and motivation.
Clark and Mayer (2016) outline several key principles of multimedia learning:
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- Dual Channels: People process visual and auditory information through separate mental channels.
- Limited Capacity: People can process only a few pieces of information at one time.
- Active Processing: Learning occurs when people attend to relevant information, organize it into mental models, and integrate it with prior knowledge.
- Multimedia Principle: Present content through a combination of words and graphics. Use graphics such as screenshots, diagrams, charts, and infographics in conjunction with text to convey information. Prioritize graphics that portray concepts, relationships, and changes over time. Draw the learners’ attention to the relevant portions of the image. Descriptions and explanations should appear to the side of the illustration, rather than below, and if the illustration shows a series of steps or parts, break up the text and place each piece next to the relevant area of the image. Explain graphics through narration rather than on-screen text.
- Redundancy Principle: Explain visuals with text or narration, but not both. Do not duplicate narration with on-screen text, unless there are no graphics, the pace is slow or learner controlled, only a few words are presented on screen (e.g., a summary of key points), or the learner must exert greater cognitive effort to process spoken text (e.g., as with some complex material).
- Coherence Principle: Exclude extraneous material. Unnecessary material causes cognitive overload, which has a negative impact on learning. Focus on the intended learning outcomes and cut irrelevant content. Keep text and narration concise and use simple graphics, avoiding detailed images and cropping unnecessary portions of screenshots.
- Personalization Principle: Use a conversational style. Use conversational language such as “you,” “I,” and “we”; phrase instructions as invitations or requests, rather than demands; and use polite wording (e.g., “please click ‘next’ when you are ready to continue”).
- Embodiment Principle: On-screen agents should mimic human gestures.
- Segmenting Principle: Break lessons into smaller chunks of content.
- Pretraining Principle: Introduce key concepts and vocabulary at the beginning of instruction.
These principles should guide every aspect of the instructional design process for online learning objects, from selecting content to designing graphics to editing textual and narrative elements.
Creating Effective Instructional Videos
Instructional videos are a common and effective way to deliver online learning content. They are ideal for brief demonstrations of a database or software, as well as short explanations of concepts.
Different styles of videos can be used:
- Live Action: Live-action videos feature real people speaking to the camera or acting and are particularly useful for demonstrating tasks.
- Slidecast: Slidecast videos are a narrated slide presentation, allowing a combination of text, graphics, and screenshots, making these good for conceptual topics.
- Animated Videos: Like slidecasts, animated videos allow a combination of text, graphics, and screenshots, making these good for conceptual topics.
In keeping with the Segmenting Principle, each video should focus on a single concept or skill. Complicated processes or systems should be broken into multiple videos and linked via a playlist, giving learners the option to jump to a specific piece of content or watch the entire series at their own pace. Videos should be as concise as possible. Clossen (2014, p. 34) recommends that videos be less than two minutes in length, while Bowles-Terry et al. (2010) found that patrons preferred videos as short as 30 seconds to one minute. Shorter videos benefit learners with concentration and cognitive-load issues (Clossen & Proces, 2017).
It is best practice to cover the most important content first. In one study of college students, only 35 percent watched an entire video; on average, they watched 54 percent of the video before quitting (Martin & Martin, 2015). Guo (2013) and Lin et al. (2017) found that the longer the video, the less likely students were to watch the entire video.
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To keep videos focused and concise, librarians should begin the design process by identifying their audience and writing a learning outcome that stipulates the knowledge or skill learners should gain from the video. Using the learning outcome as a guide, you can write a script that outlines the narration, along with the steps to be followed on screen (in the case of screencast videos) or the shots that will be needed (in the case of live-action and animated videos).
Narration should be clearly enunciated, free of background noise, and evenly paced. A headset or desktop microphone will usually capture better quality audio with less background noise than built-in microphones will and can even smooth out harsh vocal sounds (Martin & Martin, 2015). Speak at a moderate pace and pause in appropriate spots. In keeping with the elearning principles, narration should be carefully synchronized with graphics, screenshots, and on-screen actions, and should use polite, conversational wording. Describe everything taking place on the screen, such as clicking on buttons and links or entering search terms, and incorporate directional words such as “in the upper right corner of the screen” that signal where the learner should look.
Graphics should be simple, consistent, and professional looking; boxes, arrows, and similar tools can be used to call attention to essential content. When filming talking heads or live-action videos, pay attention to production values, ensuring that the area is well lit with little to no background noise and that the shot is in focus. Using a tripod can ensure a steady camera, and you might consider working with an experienced videographer for camera work.
Accessibility and Mobile Compatibility
Design content to be compatible with mobile devices. Link videos from relevant web pages, embed them in library guides, highlight them on social media, and make them available within course sites. Identify “fail points,” or places where patrons get stuck in the research process and integrate learning objects in those places (Veldof, 2008).
Ensure all learning objects are accessible to learners with disabilities. Videos should have closed captions that provide complete access to the audio narration. Captions should be accurate, timed to match the spoken words and on-screen action, and not block any important content. Generate a transcript and post it with the video. Any on-screen text and images should be large, in high-contrast colors, and remain on screen long enough to be read (Wild, 2014). Avoid flashing content, which can be distracting and hard to process (Wild, 2014).
Video Creation Software
The cost of video creation software ranges from free to fairly expensive. School and academic librarians may be eligible for educational discounts. Free options provide limited editing capabilities and may leave a watermark on the final product, while paid versions offer more robust editing options and the ability to create templates. Free versions are usually easy to use and can be a good way to experiment with making videos for those who are new to the process.
Consider the style of video to be created, since different software packages support the creation and editing of different kinds of content. Other factors to consider include platform compatibility and output options, including whether the final product will be mobile friendly.
Popular software options include:
- Free or Low-Cost: Screencast-O-Matic and Screencastify
- Marketing and Social Media: Animoto
- Professional: Camtasia and Captivate
- Animated Videos: PowToon, Wideo, and Vyond (formerly GoAnimate)
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