Frequently Asked Questions

General

1. How do I log in to Mediathread?

At the moment, access to Mediathread is only possible via Canvas.
Instructors, contact the Canvas team to add Mediathread to your Canvas site. Once added, go to your Canvas site and select Mediathread on the site's navigation menu. The first time you select Mediathread, you will see the Connect Now button. Select Connect Now, then select Launch Mediathread. Mediathread will launch in a new tab. You will see that the Mediathread site you land on matches the Canvas site from which you launched Mediathread.
Once Mediathread has been enabled and activated, students can access Mediathread by selecting Mediathread in the navigation bar of your Canvas site. Students will be asked to launch Mediathread. Once a student has launched Mediathread, they will show up on the roster of the Mediathread site.

2. What are the system requirements for Mediathread?

The Mediathread platform supports the latest versions of Chrome and Safari. Note that if you plan to collect media off the Internet, you must use Chrome. Many other browsers can use much of the functionality of Mediathread but it is not guaranteed.

Canvas Integration

1. How can I embed Mediathread selections in Canvas?

You can embed Mediathread selections in Canvas anywhere that has the Rich Content Editor (e.g. Pages, Discussions, Assignments, Quizzes, etc.).

  1. Select Edit.
  2. In the rich content editor, select the Apps icon then select Mediathread. If Mediathread does not display, select View All.
  3. Use the fields to search for content from your Collection and use the arrow on the left hand side to choose what you want to embed.

2. Which Canvas roles cannot access Mediathread?

The following Canvas roles do not have access to Mediathread: Course Content Share, Designer, Grader, Librarian, and Observer.

Managing Your Course

1. How can I manage the many settings in the course under the Manage Course menu?

Preferences

    General Settings
  • Keeping the default settings is recommended.
    Roster
  • Use this tool to view your class members. Remember that class members will only show up after they have launched Mediathread from Canvas.
    Vocabulary
  • If you want students to tag or categorize selections with a particular set of terms, use Course Vocabulary. An instructor can create a list of terms using Course Vocabulary. These terms can be grouped by larger concepts, creating a two tier hierarchy (multiple parent concepts each with multiple children terms). To create a parent concept, click on the Create Concept + button. To create a term, click on an existing parent concept.
    In the course, Vocabulary is used similarly to tags. When annotating an item, you can attach course terms. In the Collection tab, you can search for items or annotations by course terms.

Materials

    Sources
  • Choose from a list of recommended resources to add to your site.
    Migrations
  • Use this feature if you need to move course materials from a previous class to the current class.

Participation

    Activity
  • This is a list of all activity done on the course site. Each activity has a link to the change, a time stamp, and a brief description.
    Member Contributions
  • This is a list of all your course members and each of their corresponding amounts of selections, discussion posts, and compositions. A graph visualization of these contributions is provided.
    Assignment Responses
  • This is a list of all your assignments and the number of responses. In the Response column, the first number is the number of responses, and the second number is the number of students (possible responses). Clicking on the number in the response column takes you to a detailed report of the Assignment. You can click on the links in the Titles column to go to each individual response. By clicking on Download Detail, you can get a CSV file of the report, which you can open in Excel. This is an alternative way to view your assignments other than the Assignments tab in the course.

Mediathread Collection

1. How do I add media to my collection?

There are a few ways to add media to your collection:

  1. Directly from your computer desktop, or
  2. Directly from the Internet via the Mediathread Google Chrome Extension. For media available on the Internet, it needs to be freely available and not subject to copyright restrictions. If you are not sure whether the piece of media you want to add is available, you can simply try adding it to the collection.
    If you are having difficulty with the Mediathread Google Chrome Extension, you can copy and paste the URL of the media item directly onto the Collection screen under "Import Media." Just note that if you go this route, the thumbnail image will be broken on the Collection screen.

2. How do I use the Google Chrome Extension?

You only need to add the extension once.

  1. Go to your course in Mediathread and select Collection
  2. Select Add to Collection (blue button on right hand side)
  3. You will be prompted to install the Extension - Follow the prompts
  4. Once you have the extension, open a browser and find media you want to add to your collection. You must be logged in to Mediathread.
  5. When you have found media to add, select the browser extension icon on your toolbar (next to the URL bar). You will be asked if you want to Collect or Open in Mediathread. To stay on the website and continue searching, select Collect. To go to Mediathread and analyze the item, select Open in Mediathread.

3. What resources are recommended?

Recommended resources include:

4. How do I search for collected media?

Once you have media in your Collection space you can search for specific items. You can search via:

  • Title of the media
  • Name of person who added it to the collection
  • Tags associated with it
  • Date it was added

NOTE: Images or other media cannot be imported from Google Drive.

Assignments (for Instructors)

1. How do I create an assignment?
  1. To create an assignment, select the Assignments tab .
  2. Select Add an assignment button
  3. Under Selection Assignment, select the Add assignment button

You will be taken through an assignment wizard which will provide step-by-step instructions on the steps needed to create the assignment. The assignment wizard occurs over several pages; you can use the Previous and Next buttons below the wizard to navigate through the pages. Be sure to provide clear instructions and expectations for your students. In Mediathread, due dates are not binding; they do not prevent students from submitting late assignments. All student submissions have a time stamp at the time of submission so that the instructor knows when they were submitted. An instructor needs to administer consequences related to deadlines (if any) outside of Mediathread.

3. How do I review my assignments?

To review all the assignments you have created, select the Assignments tab. A table of all your assignments is provided to you. If you have more than 10 assignments, the table will have multiple pages, with each page showing 10 assignments. You can navigate through the table pages by selecting any of the buttons below the bottom-right of the table.

The table has eight different columns. Five of these columns are sortable. To sort by that column, select the column header.

  • Due Date - The due date of the assignment
  • Status - Whether your assignment is in draft form or shared with the class
  • Title - The title you set for the assignment. You can select the Assignment Title to edit the assignment.
  • Responses - The number of students who have submitted responses / the total number of students (possible responses) in the class
  • Authors - The class members who have created the assignment
  • Assignment Type - There is only one - Selection Assignment
  • Last Updated - The last time any activity was done on the assignment (an instructor has created the assignment, an instructor has edited the assignment, or a student submitted a response)
  • Delete - Any assignment with 0 responses can be deleted. Select the Delete link to delete.

To review submissions for an assignment, select the Title of the assignment in the Assignments tab. All assignment submissions are viewable once the assignment loads. You can organize the submissions by clicking on the View Options drop-down menu, which is next to Responses. You can also display all submissions simultaneously via the View Options. The drop-down menu inside the blue submissions button both lists when students submitted assignments, but also gives faculty the option to unsubmit assignments (See "6. How do I unsubmit a student's response?" below).

4. How do I edit assignments?

To edit an assignment, select the Title of the assignment in the Assignments tab. Once the assignment is loaded, select the Edit Assignment button to go to the assignment wizard (which was used to create the assignment). You can use the assignment wizard to edit the fields and settings for the assignment.

5. How do I provide feedback?

Feedback is private and can only be viewed by you and the author of the response.
Find the student's response in the list of responses. Click on +add feedback next to the student's name. After typing in your feedback, click the Save Feedback button. You can return to the student's response and click on edit feedback to edit your feedback.

6. How do I unsubmit a student's response?

You may want to unsubmit an assignment if a student needs to fix their submission. Navigate to a student's response (See "3. How do I review my assignments?" above). Then select Unsubmit.

Assignments (for Students)

1. What do the different statuses for assignments mean?

Assignments are listed in the order of which assignments do not have a submission as well as in the order of the closest due date. Each assignment is also labeled with its current status. These are the possible statuses that an assignment can have:

    No Response
  • You have not submitted a response for this assignment, nor have you started a draft for your response
    Draft
  • You have started a draft for the assignment, but have not submitted anything
    Shared with Instructor
  • The response has been submitted and can only be viewed by the instructor
    Shared with Class
  • The response has been submitted and can be viewed by everyone in the class

2. What is a Selection Assignment?

Within a Selection Assignment, you will be asked to select or annotate parts of a chosen media file. The annotation tools available will depend on the type of media (image or audio/video). When annotating you can add comments that help answer the instructions or address the context of the assignment. Typically for these assignments you can create multiple selections before submitting them as the response to the assignment.

You can create multiple selections before submitting a response.

  1. To start, select Create Selection
  2. Use the annotation tool to select a part of the media item that you want to comment on
  3. Fill in the selection information fields
  4. Select Save Selection
  5. Repeat the process if you want to add more selections
  6. Select the Submit Selections button when you are ready to submit the assignment. Be sure you are ready to submit, as you cannot undo the submission after the fact.

4. Who can see my submitted work?

For assignments, your instructor will decide at what level of visibility your submission will have. The instructor will always be able to see the submission, but they will choose whether your submissions will be shared with other classmates. Instructors can also choose hide your classmates responses until you have submitted your own response.