How to Embed Videos in Blackboard

Adding or embedding videos to your website is a great way to make them engaging and drive traffic to your site. As a matter of fact, 78% of video marketers say video directly drives sales. You can leverage the power of video marketing by embedding it on your website, landing page, blogs, or product pages.

An embedded video lets you place a video on your website from another video platform. Your viewers can watch videos without having to leave the current page. Just copy and paste the embed code. A simple example is your branding video is hosted on YouTube, which can be viewed on your site.

However, doing this for a website is easy, but what about embedding videos inside a learning management system such as Blackboard?

In this blog, we’ll see why you should embed a video rather that directly uploading as a file in your LMS. We then discuss how you can embed a video in Blackboard. We’ll be particularly looking at embedding videos through YouTube in Blackboard and VIDIZMO as an alternative solution.

Why Should We Embed a Video?

Rather than uploading a video as a standalone file, embedding has the following benefits:

Video file is transcoded into multiple renditions with varying bandwidth and resolution levels - your viewers can choose the best resolution according to their device or bandwidth
The video automatically plays without needing to be downloaded
Set a customized video start time and redirect users to the relevant part
Save storage because the video is hosted on another site
Embedded videos have closed captions, which improve video searchability

How Can You Embed Videos?

At this stage, you must be geared up to embed videos. We’ll look into the various ways of embedding videos into Blackboard:

How to Embed Videos in Blackboard

Blackboard, as a Learning Management System (LMS) or more of a course management system provides content to learners in a centralized repository. You can upload video files on the course content page. The drawback is that students have to download them before viewing them. There are, however, plug-ins to improve this. Add the file from the content collection and control what your student see. You can also add goals and standards and improve content accessibility.

You can insert media directly into the editor by following the below steps

Add content
Insert/edit video
Paste the embed code in the media URL
Click Select

Even though you can embed videos in Blackboard, it isn't optimized for viewing as it would be if embedded through a video cms.

Embed a YouTube Video in Blackboard

This is how you can embed a YouTube video in Blackboard

Search up the preferred video
Click the share button
Click the embed button on sharing menu
Copy the embed code
Log in to your account and click build content in the navigation
Then you have to create an item
Then select the HTML code button
Paste the embed code and update
Click submit
Press play

These videos are now optimized for playback - Great!

However, the drawback of embedding videos this way is that YouTube takes away certain ownership of your content, such that it will be able to distribute your content. Moreover, security and privacy are the main concerns as YouTube provides basic security and no enhanced features to restrict viewing or access.

Alternative? Embed by Integrating Blackboard With VIDIZMO

Alternatively, you can choose a video cms like VIDIZMO that lets you integrate with an LMS such as Blackboard. It helps you:

Embed your separate videos within course components as supporting content
Embed the entire VIDIZMO video library onto your LMS for centralized knowledge management

What will be the benefits of such an integration?

A viewer doesn’t have to download the video to view it.
You can live stream training sessions.
VIDIZMO’s AI-powered smart video search will let you find the right course or video on your LMS in seconds.
Automatic closed captions and transcription can be generated with support for around 90 languages.
Support microlearning by easily trimming your videos
Video reports and analytics gives you detailed insights on your video content and monitoring your courses
Learners can access a video portal with all the relevant videos assigned to them included there.

VIDIZMO is not only for embedding and integrating, but you can also upload, stream, manage and share your videos securely for any other video use cases. You can visit our website to learn more, or reach out to us and our team will be happy to assist.