A brief introduction of CLAS (Collaborative Learning Annotation System) in its role as a video sharing platform. Some major features and screenshots, previous use-cases, architecture, and requirements for campus-wide adoption at UBC.

1. 1 of 19
CLAS @ UBC
A platform for learning with video
through collaboration and personalized feedback
Arts Instructional Support and IT
University of British Columbia

2. 2 of 19
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

3. 3 of 19
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?

4. 4 of 19
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

5. 5 of 19
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

6. 6 of 19
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

7. 7 of 19
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

8. 8 of 19
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

9. 9 of 19
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?

10. 10 of 19
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

11. 11 of 19
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

12. 12 of 19
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

13. 13 of 19
CLAS is part of an ecosystem
Automatic enrolmentIntegration with SSO
Enroll by invita4on URL

14. 14 of 19
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

15. 15 of 19
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

16. 16 of 19
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

17. 17 of 19
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!

18. 18 of 19
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

19. 19 of 19
“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