ALIGNED: A variety of media, such as text, audio, video, images and/or graphics are used throughout.
EXEMPLARY: Multimedia is used creatively throughout the course to facilitate student-centered learning.

A8: Effective Use of Multimedia is grounded in the notion that different people are engaged by different modalities, and that varied material may need to be presented using a variety of modalities. Aligned courses should use a variety of text, audio, video, images, graphics, charts, and tables, as appropriate, to engage learners.

The rubric does not stipulate how much variety a course needs, but it does say that aligned courses use a variety of media throughout the course. If a course is dominated by a single media type, it is not yet aligned.

Effective Videos

Video is one of the most powerful tools we have in our online teaching toolkit, especially when we are explaining or demonstrating a concept. To help you make the most of this tool, we have a 6-minute video for you that provides four valuable tips. In fact, you'll find what you learn here can help you with Canvas page design, too!

Adding Interaction to Videos

A great way to reach Exemplary for A8 is to "facilitate student-centered learning" through adding interaction elements to video. At Southwestern College, we have several tools to support this creative use of technology:

Canvas Studio supports student conversations below the video
Playposit can be used to get students interacting with videos
VoiceThread creates multimedia discussions, allowing students to discuss a video or image using text, audio, video, and drawing