Publishing vs. Embedding

What's the difference between publishing and embedding a video in Canvas? Read below to find out.

There are two terms that Kaltura uses to describe at the highest level how to present videos to your students: "publishing" and "embedding."

When videos are "published," they are made visible to students in the course(s) you specify by appearing in that course's Media Gallery. Without any other action, however, the Media Gallery will be the only place they can find your videos. Because there isn't any automated notification when something is added to a Media Gallery, you'll need to ensure that students know to find your videos there.

When videos are "embedded," they are inserted into the piece of instructional material you have specified. Usually, embedding a video means finding the video's "embed code" - the HTML that a webpage needs in order to properly display the video when the page is loaded. Within Canvas, however, there's a button within the rich content editor that easily allows you to select the video from "My Media" that you want to insert, without having to deal with any of the code itself. Videos can be embedded into any piece of instructional materials that use the rich text editor, such as pages, assignments, or even quizzes.

Should I Publish or Embed My Videos?

You may be wondering whether it's better to publish your videos to the Media Gallery or embed them within your modules. Well, from a best practices perspective, ideally you would do both.

Presenting your students with a well-organized course - a logical module structure, clear learning objectives, plenty of context for what they need to consume, and so on - is a key tenet of effective instructional design. Create pages within your modules for your multimedia that make clear when students are expected to consume them, and use the rich content editor to provide context for how the video fits in with the larger course structure.

Many students, however, benefit from being able to review your videos (for example, prior to an assessment), so consider publishing them to the Media Gallery as well to facilitate finding them.

As you can see in the table below, embedding videos does take a little more effort - but not much. The time you spend creating an effective and thorough modular structure to your course can have a powerful effect on your students.