LibGuides: Library Resources to Enhance Learning and Teaching: Integrating Streaming Videos

What is Streaming Video?

Source: Wikimedia Commons (image by Dom Robinson). Click for a full-sized image.

Streaming video delivers video content to computer desktops via the Internet without the need for additional equipment for decoding or downloading. Playback requires the installation of appropriate software. Commonly used streaming software includes Windows Media, RealVideo, QuickTime and Flash.

Because of their large file size, streaming video files are compressed, which can negatively affect image quality when viewed in full-screen mode or projected to a larger screen. Streaming video also requires a robust, high-speed internet connection, which means that dial-up connections are too slow to deliver streaming videos adequately.

Simmons subcribes to VAST: Academic Video Online, a streaming media platform from Alexander Street Press (ASP) that provides subject-specific video content developed by the BBC, Creative Arts Television, ArtHaus Musik, Pennebaker, Hegedus Films, Cunningham Dance Foundation, Insight Media and many other publishers and broadcast companies.

Helpful Online Resources

Integrating Online Multimedia into College Course and Classroom
From MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, this article discusses an approach for efficiently incorporating online media resources into course and classroom. Consideration is given to pedagogical rationale, types of media, locating programs and clips, content retrieval and delivery, copyright issues, and
typical problems experienced by instructors and students using online resources.

Streaming Video in the Classroom

If you use videos in your classes and are teaching an online or blended class, ask your librarian to help you find streaming videos that can be linked to or embedded in your course management system so that students don't have to come to the library to watch the films you want them to see. The Library has thousands of streaming videos in its collection, including documentaries, feature films and instructional videos. Below are links to the main platforms that we currently have access to. If you can't find what you need here, see Streaming Video at the Library for more!

Filmakers Library Online
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- Why search here?
  Filmakers Library Online provides award-winning streaming documentaries with relevance across the curriculum, including race and gender studies, human rights, globalization and global studies, multiculturalism, international relations, criminal justice, the environment, bioethics, health, political science and current events, psychology, arts, literature and more.
- What's included?
  Films included in this collection present points of view and historical and current experiences from diverse cultures and traditions world-wide. The current release provides over 1,000 titles and over 800 hours of film.
Kanopy
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- Why search here?
  Kanopy is a leading distributor of online educational videos across a wide variety of subject areas. Kanopy also provides access to classic Hollywood and foreign films from the Criterion Collection.
- What's included?
  Thousands of videos in the Humanities, Education, the Arts, Business, Health, Sciences and Media & Communications and more are available for the Library to license for courses. Faculty - to obtain a video for your class, submit a reserves request.
  
  Kanopy might load a page asking the user to either create a Kanopy account or “Skip” to start watching. Users should select the "Skip" button, and do not need to create their own account to view videos.
Swank Feature Films Database
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- Why search here?
  Check out feature films from major motion picture studios.