Channels are the preferred way to organize media in Illinois MediaSpace. Channels are used to group videos that have a common purpose (course) or have a common audience (course offering). The same video can reside in multiple channels and be made available to different audiences based on the security settings of those channels. There are several classifications of channels we create for online programs. In regard to the intended audience, we have internal, external, and restricted channels.
Internal channels are used by staff as organizational holding tanks for videos with a common theme, such as videos created for a specific course. These channels are not directly accessible by students or other external audiences. The channel structure makes it easy to provide a complete set of course videos to other staff members instead of providing links to each individual video. In most cases, internal channels are created by the Digital Media team and are configured with the “Private” privacy setting, but may be converted to the “Restricted” or “Public, Restricted” setting at a later time (see below for additional details). At the very least, they should be rostered with the “Business eLearning Staff” group as manager and “Business eLearning Student Workers” group as member. Whenever an additional user or group needs access to these videos, the channel membership can be adjusted to include that user or group.
To make a video available to an external audience, that video can be published to an additional channel that has been created for that specific purpose. An example of these external channels is one containing live session recordings. The recordings are made available only to those students in that course. These channels are created as part of the course development process and they typically do not get reused from one term to the next. These private channels must be rostered with the students enrolled in the course. They are also rostered with “Business eLearning Staff” and “Business eLearning IDAs” groups as manager and “Business eLearning Student Workers” group as member. The IDAs, as managers, then have access to add CAs and TAs as additional members to the channel.
There is yet another classification of channel that fits somewhere between internal and external. This type of channel has the “Restricted” setting which allows any user with valid MediaSpace credentials to view the videos within it. We began using these restricted channels in the Fall 2019 term with Mike Yao’s and Larry DeBrock’s iMBA courses. These courses were specifically selected because they contain several supplemental videos that are embedded in Compass. The use of these channels for supplemental videos allows the Compass site to be copied from term to term without the need to adjust security settings on the channel. The embedded videos will be available to any user who can log into MediaSpace whether they are a member of the channel or not, and their user information will be captured in the analytics. As with external channels, restricted channels are created as part of the course development process.