Teachers and students benefit from using video in Moodle™ for its ability to present complex concepts dynamically, engage diverse learning styles, and offer personalized learning experiences. Video content stimulates interest, enhances comprehension, and fosters collaboration among students, promoting a more engaging and effective educational environment within the Moodle™ platform.
Top Features of Moodle™ Video Plugins
Which Plugin you choose for video is really highly dependent on what you are looking to achieve and indeed the level of investment you are willing to make. For some simply uploading videos directly into Moodle™ or simply pasting links to YouTube content is enough. Objectively if you are looking to use video to facilitate teachers to use videos in ways which enrich students' learning experience an integrated video solution for Moodle™ is required. Below is a summary of the kinds of features that are important to consider when selecting a Moodle™ Video Plugin
Embedding Videos
Is it easy to embed content to course pages or within all of the activities in Moodle™? Does the tool you are looking at make it simple to add video everywhere in Moodle™ with just a few clicks and it is fully integrated so that you don’t need to leave Moodle™ to grab embed code. MEDIAL's Activity Plugin allows use to easily add video to Moodle™ Course Pages and MEDIAL Atto Editor Plugin button means that all of the video functions available within MEDIAL can be accessed anywhere that a text editor appears in Moodle™ with the touch of a button
Streaming
What capabilities do the systems or Plugins you are looking at have to deliver the video content to users of differing bandwidths and internet connections? Will the system smoothly deliver the content as adaptive bitrate streams so that no user is faced with buffering/ MEDIAL uses Wowza Streaming Engine - one of the world’s leading streaming server technologies to ensure smooth delivery of video to all users
Security
Does the system that you are considering fully protect your content? This could be from an economic point of view or from that of privacy. Protecting your content from unauthorized download safeguards your content as an asset. Restricting unauthorized sharing content outside of Moodle™ means that users can be confident that their content and personal data is fully secured. MEDIAL’s Video Plugins for Moodle™ use industry strength and LTI session based security to ensure that neither of these unauthorized scenarios is possible
File Upload Restrictions
Are there any restrictions on the size or formats of file that you can upload? This is a real pain point for a lot of users of Moodle™ as the inbuilt tools do not allow large uploads and Moodle™ itself does not transcode or compress media which is uploaded. MEDIAL’s Video Plugins for Moodle™ can be configured to allow up to 100Gb file uploads and all files which are uploaded are transcoded and compressed using industry standards
Video Assignments and Submissions
Will the Plugin or Tool allow you to give teachers the ability to create video based assignments and for students to upload video responses to those assignments through a fully integrated tool? Will the tool also work with the existing Assignment Activity within Moodle™ rather than being its own activity that users may not be familiar with? MEDIAL Video Assignment Activity works as additional submission type in the standard Moodle™ Assignment Activity and allow Teachers and Students to upload or record content within the context of an assignment submission
Video Feedback
In addition to video assignments will the Plugin permit you to give Teachers the functionality to record video feedback for the assignment submissions made by students? This greatly enriches the student learning journey and experience. MEDIAL Video Feedback Plugin facilitates teachers to leave video feedback for their students and like the MEDIAL Video Assignment Activity it is fully integrated with the Moodle™ Assignment Activity and Grade Book.
Choosing the Best Plugin
Flexibility
You need to choose a solution that gives you a wide range of features and Plugins that enable you to achieve your aims. MEDIAL has a range of Plugins that allow a multitude of video functions. Not all of these Plugins need to be installed from the outset but the MEDIAL Video Solution from Moodle™ is flexible enough to grow with your evolving needs. MEDIAL also integrates Moodle™ seamlessly with Zoom and Teams allowing auto ingestion of meeting recordings
Instructions
Clear and concise instructions are required in order to install and configure the Plugins for whatever video solution you select. MEDIAL has an in depth Moodle™ course which outlines how to install the MEDIAL Video Plugins for Moodle™ in detail in a step by step process
To trial the MEDIAL Plugins for Moodle there is an easy to follow Moodle course - https://moodle.medialibrary.com/course/view.php?id=96
Ease of Use
Teachers and Students aren’t video wizards. They want and are used to tools that take minimal effort and that are above all things simple to use. MEDIAL’s Video Plugins for Moodle™ are designed to be this way and are battle hardened for this use case and have been used for over 10 years by the world’s leading educational establishments in over 20 different countries
Pricing
You want a solution that is affordable and can scale as you grow. Many of the video solutions out there for Moodle™ are all of nothing and large budgets are required to implement those solutions either Faculty or Institution wide. MEDIAL’s pricing starts at $195 per month for its limited feature set MEDIALite solution. It can also support institution wide deployments and affordable packages are available for both Cloud or On Premise deployment
MEDIAL’s pricing starts at $195 per month.
There are two MEDIAL solutions:
MEDIAL:
This is our full video solution that has the entire feature set enabled:
MEDIALibrary - YouTube-like portal to allow users to upload, tag, playback and secure their video content using Active Directory, LDAP or SSO
MEDIALive - allowing you to Publish, Archive and Schedule your Live Streaming in just a few clicks
MEDIALearning - Integration with Moodle, Blackboard, Canvas or D2L with limited admin capabilities
MEDIALecture - Instantly record and upload screen capture videos to your Moodle, Blackboard or Canvas LMS for users to access anytime, anywhere
Zoom and/or Teams Integration - allow Teachers to add auto ingested meeting recordings to course pages with a few clicks
This can be purchased as an On Premise solution from $3,995 per annum or as a Saas solution starting from $9,995 per annum
MEDIALite:
This is our starter product that only includes:
MEDIALearning - Integration with Moodle, Blackboard, Canvas or D2L with limited admin capabilities
Prices start at $195 for 100Gb of storage.
MEDIALecture can be purchased as a monthly or yearly add on to MEDIALite
Full details of pricing are at https://www.medial.com/pricing
Reliability
MEDIAL has been around since 2014 and the company that makes MEDIAL was established in 2008. Its Moodle™ Video Plugins have been used by some of the largest Universities in the world but also be many smaller educational establishments and companies to make video and Moodle™ work together in harmony with rock solid reliability
Conclusion
MEDIAL is a great solution for those educational organizations who want a low cost entry point into an Enterprise Video Solution with integration into their chosen LMS. MEDIAL measures up favourably in terms of feature set to other video solutions, especially in the area of LMS integration.
Pricing starts at $195 per month and all pricing options are displayed on their web site. Full product support is available as well as product onboarding.
If you are interested to know more about MEDIAL go to https://www.medial.com/schedule-appointment to schedule a demo