This post was updated in late April 2023 and mid-September 2023.
Kaltura is UBC’s primary platform for capturing, managing, and sharing academic videos. Starting on Saturday, April 1, 2023, UBC will begin moving Kaltura videos hosted at UBC into the Kaltura cloud, to create a better video experience for you and your students.
During the current academic term, the migration will only affect when you can change your Kaltura videos. But in May, it will also change where your Kaltura videos are linked from and it will reset some data tied to Kaltura videos, including analytics, comments, and previous answers that students gave to quizzes. Rest assured that grades pushed from a Kaltura video quiz to the Canvas Gradebook will be retained; you will not lose any grades in Canvas.
What will happen in April?
Because of the high volume of videos in Kaltura, this migration will happen gradually over the course of the full month. The LT Hub video team will begin moving videos on Saturday, April 1, 2023 and finish by Monday, May 1, 2023. Videos will be migrated chronologically, with older videos moving first and more recent videos moving later.
The migration will have minimal impact on courses this term. Your students will not lose access to your Kaltura videos at any point. Students will be able to view, comment on, and take quizzes for your videos as they normally would. The only impact on your courses this term is that we strongly recommend not changing your Kaltura videos or metadata during the month of April.
How can I prepare for the migration?
- Plan any changes to Kaltura videos before or after the month of April. Videos that have started their migration will not properly save changes until after April 30. Changes include any modifications to a video’s metadata, edits to the video, and updates to the video’s published/unpublished status. If you must change a Kaltura video in April, use the “Save a Copy” option in the Kaltura Editor to first make a copy. Once you have saved your changes to the copied video, update the link or embed code for your video in the course, so it points correctly to this copied video.
- If you want to save Kaltura video analytics or the previous answers that students gave to Kaltura video quizzes, download this data before April 30. This data will not be migrated with the videos. After April 30, you will need to contact us at the LT Hub for help with downloading this data. We will do our best to find what you need in our data backups.
You can download this data using the Kaltura portal or using Canvas. The data will be the same either way.
- Log in to the Teaching & Learning Media Portal with your UBC CWL (Campus-Wide Login).
- Click your name in the upper right corner, and select My Media.
- Click the graph icon to the right of any video you wish to download data for.
- The first page that loads has the video analytics. Download this data, if you like:
- Click Export, tick off the report checkboxes for what analytics data you want, and click Export Reports.
- Click Okay. The report link(s) will be emailed to you for downloading.
- If the video has a quiz, you will see tabs at the top for the quiz data. Download this data, if you like:
- Click the Quiz Questions tab (for exact student answers to the questions) or the Quiz Users tab (for overall attempts and scores by student).
- Click Export to CSV to download the data from this tab.
- Repeat this process for other videos as desired.
- Log in to your Canvas course and click My Media in the Course Navigation.
- Click the graph icon to the right of any video you wish to download data for.
- The first page that loads has the video analytics. Download this data, if you like:
- Click Export, tick off the report checkboxes for what analytics data you want, and click Export Reports.
- Click Okay. The report link(s) will be emailed to you for downloading.
- If the video has a quiz, you will see tabs at the top for the quiz data. Download this data, if you like:
- Click the Quiz Questions tab (for exact student answers to the questions) or the Quiz Users tab (for overall attempts and scores by student).
- Click Export to CSV to download the data from this tab.
- Repeat this process for other videos as desired.
- Note down any places where you have shared Kaltura videos outside of Canvas. After the migration, the location of your videos will change to the Kaltura cloud. For Kaltura videos you share outside of Canvas, you will need to update their links after May 2023, so they are correctly linking to the video’s new location. Making a list of these places now will save you time in updating them later.
- For Kaltura videos shared in Canvas courses, there is nothing you need to prepare. The LT Hub will run a script in May to automatically update Kaltura videos embedded normally in Canvas courses (e.g., videos displayed in a Canvas module or page), so they point to the right location.
Where can I get more support?
Contact us
We know that preparing for technology changes can be stressful. We are happy to answer questions and help guide you through the process.
- Contact your faculty’s Instructional Support Unit or appropriate helpdesk as your first point of contact.
- Contact us for further assistance:
LT.hub@ubc.ca or 604 827 4775 or visit the LT Hub online for weekday drop-in support.
Join a workshop
You can register for a Kaltura workshop, held at noon on variable dates each month. These one-hour introductory sessions will delve into the features available in the Kaltura cloud. You can also ask questions and get answers about the migration of your videos.
Learn more
You can also read about the Kaltura cloud migration and the broader Enterprise Video Platform project that it is part of, to learn more.