Collaborative Learning Annotation System (CLAS) What is it? Major Features, use-cases, architecture, development process, some screenshots and demo links

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CLAS @ UBC
A platform for learning with video
through collaboration and personalized feedback
Arts Instructional Support and IT
University of British Columbia

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The story of CLAS
2010: one-time development for psych research on lecture note-taking
Video annotation tool concepts: Dr. Alan Kingstone, Dr. Evan Risko, Dr. Tom Foulsham,
Dr. Shane Dawson, Dr. Negin Mirriahi
2012: restarted as a learning app
2014: pivoted into “A Video Platform for Learning, Not Showing”
Primary developers: Thomas Dang (2013 onward) and John Bratlien (original)
Product strategy: Thomas Dang, Dr. Fred Cutler
With inputs from: Ricardo Serrano, Sharon Hu, Arts Learning Center, UBC eHealth
Strategy Office, UBC school of music
Project management: Ricardo Serrano
Service strategy: Ricardo Serrano, Angela Lam
Service operation, training, consultation, documentation: Angela Lam, Sharon Hu,
Jenny Wong, Leanna Chow
Quality control and deployment strategy: Thomas Dang

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Why another video platform?
UBC licensed an enterprise video platform for
digital asset management, copyright, privacy
UBC also has an LMS (BB) and a CMS (WP)
Why was CLAS needed?

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What are the needs? 1/2
Administrators and curriculum leaders
Analytics aggregated not only by video
Ø But also by student, course, and department
Analytics about learning, not about videos
Ø 30 types of data relevant to learning collected
Multiple ownership of videos
Simple onboarding of complex and diverse course designs

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What are the needs? 2/2
Instructors and students
Video playlist and teacher-student Q&A or feedback
all in one place à less navigation!
Feedback & discussion tied to precise points on videos
Record audio or video as feedback
Privacy and anonymity

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What is CLAS used for at UBC?
Feedback on skills
Video share and embed
Flip with discussion
Admission with video
As of 2015: 2500 active students annually
In 4 years: 110 course sections, 6000+ videos, 49000 posts, 1 million words

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Flipped classroom with discussion
Threaded dialogue on
documentaries, news, TED:
Youtube videos imported into
CLAS to take advantage of
collaborative discussion interface
Learning the language of
math:
watching videos of math proofs,
discuss where the inflection points
are, Q&A with instructor/students
Other lecture videos:
• Political science
• Art history
• Biology
• Food safety and production

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Practicum feedback: Faculty of Education
Difficult for advisors to attend on-
site student practicum
• Students self-record from the field
• Submit to specific advisors on CLAS,
establishing one-on-one feedback
• Process and technology must be
simple
• While field requirements are very
complex!
Usage in inquiry and micro-
teaching courses on campus

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Practicum feedback: Faculty of Medicine
Student-doctors interview and consult patients as part of practicum
Difficult for evaluators to be in these interviews
• Interviews are recorded for async feedback
• Videos need to be shared privately
between student and evaluator
• Videos need to be owned by multiple faculty
administrators to ensure continuity
• Some feedback must be private,
some are shared to entire cohort
• Feedback must be at specific
moments: what was said? Body language?

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Feedback on skills: Faculty of Arts
Language pronunciation practice
• Students record themselves and
share to instructor
• Instructor provides private, pointed
feedback
• And instructors record their own
voice and face to demonstrate
Presentation skill practice
• Videos shared to the whole class
• Everyone provides feedback on 2-3
peer presentations
• Instructor provides feedback and
mark on each presentation
Student conductors and Orchestra
• Watch themselves and self-reflect
• Instructor provides private feedback and mark
• Entire cohort discuss on group performances

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Share and embed
Unmet needs in online
course creation
• Loads only when visible: so we
can hide many videos under
accordions at first
• Automatically responsive: no
matter where we embed, will display
correctly on mobile without extra
plug in or cross-domain scripting
• Easy access to discussion
• Capture analytics by users, not
just cumulative views
CLAS can also confer these abilities
to other video sources
e.g. YouTube, Dropbox, Vimeo

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Admission
Auditions
Auditions a critical part of
admission for Music
Applicants can’t come to Vancouver,
so send in audition videos
=> Hundreds of applicants, dozens of
programs, dozens of faculty evaluators,
3-4 days to review!
Via CLAS, a simple “upload and
apply” workflow for students and
“review your personal pool of
applicants” workflow for faculty
With upload copyright gate and
record retention

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CLAS is part of an ecosystem
Automatic enrolmentIntegration with SSO
Enroll by invita4on URL

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Support strategy
Need to reduce TCO from its humble beginning. How?
à A marriage of product and support strategies
A) Simplifying support by clearly separating instructor role and support staff
role
B) Sharing support between a central team and distributed teams
C) Life cycle and continuity management:
¡ Simple mechanism to duplicate course settings and playlists
¡ Multiple ownership of videos so that different department administrators, support
staff, and instructors can provide overlapping video management and service
continuity

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How did we execute?
Multi-tenancy: separate data, access ctrl, and code
Remote-updating of live service with no downtime
Hybrid shared and distributed support dashboard
360-degree feedback among support, development,
and users

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360-degree feedback?
Buy-in by instructors and curriculum leaders is everything
First impression
• Frequent onboarding workshops
• Easy-to-access orientation videos
• Site visits to new adopters with new use-cases
Responsive “customer service”
• No-downtime remote-update was critical
• Hundreds of updates to live service at UBC each year
• Bugs fixed within the hour
Happy support team à Happy users

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Lessons learned
From 5 years of “building a plane while flying it (with no accidents!)”
And feedback from 50+ instructors at UBC
And a further 50+ research interviews of instructors, academic leaders,
and IT managers from BC, the US, and the UK
à In-house innovation can be a beautiful thing!
à Clear pain remaining: Off-campus “field condition” is scary!

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The future of CLAS
Another pivot
… to “suite of self-contained but integrated tools”, each
focusing on an archetypal* educational need
To further simplify onboarding and minimize TCO
While still fulfilling institutional needs for privacy,
copyright, and digital asset management

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“CLAS” WILL CONTINUE, AND WILL ONLY GROW
THOUGH THE NAME MAY CHANGE
THANK YOU!
More info: CLAS.UBC.CA
Mail to: arts.helpdesk@ubc.ca