What is Kaltura MediaSpace?
Kaltura MediaSpace is a digital media portal that provides a suite of tools for creating, publishing, streaming and sharing media files. It is integrated with Blackboard and can also be used outside of Blackboard. Kaltura MediaSpace functions similarly to YouTube, but with more control and management options. Users have the ability to segregate videos into channels with specific access controls, moderate comments, and the option to open channels to viewers outside the university where appropriate control and moderation can be employed. In addition, media can be organised into channels or playlists, are automatically machine-captioned and tags attributed can make searching easier within the platform.
How was this project initiated?
This project was initiated on request from UQ Business School and there was also strong interest from other schools and units to use Kaltura MediaSpace as a video content management platform to manage their growing number of video assets.
What was the objective of the pilot?
The pilot's objective was to determine whether Kaltura MediaSpace could be effectively used as a university-wide Learning Object Repository (LOR) to manage various media files which can be shared and accessed at both a program and school level. The pilot also helped determine whether MediaSpace could be used as a storage and organisation solution for UQ Extend courses.
What happened?
A soft launch approach was adopted to enable the eLearning team to review and decide on how the MediaSpace site could be appropriately managed, structured and accessed by working collaboratively with a select group of users for subject matter expertise. To facilitate this, Kaltura MediaSpace was initially made available to UQ Business School and the ITaLI Media team as they are both heavy users of video content.
What was the outcome?
Due to the lack of LTI integration between Kaltura and UQ Extend, MediaSpace was deemed an unviable solution as a video content management platform to manage video assets. In addition, a major functionality gap was encountered where gallery managers did not have automatic editing/sharing access to all videos added to the gallery they manage.
While Kaltura provided a potential fix for this through custom development work which they did for another university, it was not recommended since it is not a standard part of their platform. Kaltura also could not guarantee that we would not encounter additional issues and the solution could not be customised further for UQ.
Staff communications
- 24 June 2022: This project page was created to keep stakeholders informed
- Private project channel in the TEL Early Adopters Microsoft Team
- Articles regarding this project will feature in the Teaching and eLearning News newsletter
- Updates at the eLearning Operational Forum (eLOF)
- Reports to the Digital Learning Sub Committee
Resources
- New Getting started with Kaltura MediaSpace guide created
- Existing MediaSpace guides/videos by Kaltura linked on Video and Audio Upload tool page
Project timeline
- Feb 2022: Business case submitted
- May 2022: Contract established with vendor
- July 2022: Approved by the IT Project Approval Board (PAB)
- Aug 2022: Contract finalised with vendor
- Sep 2022: Key staff completed online training:
- 2 Sep: Kaltura MediaSpace Overview
- 6 Sep: Kaltura MediaSpace Essentials Training
- 13 Sep: Kaltura MediaSpace Admin & Config Training
- Sep 2022: Key staff were given access to a staging environment
- Oct 2022: Live MediaSpace setup and user testing
- Nov 2022: Initial feedback gathering from pilot participants
- Dec 2022: Instructional guides created/linked
- Dec 2022: SSO integration
- Jan - June 2023: Piloted in select Semester 1, 2023 courses
- July 2023: Evaluation survey conducted