Discussion
My university ditched the embedded video system they were using for online courses for "Zoom clips" and it's fucking stuffed to the gills with AI features that will make it so students don't actually learn anything - there's a fucking homework cheat "helper" built right in that summarizes lectures and gives you homework answers.
I desperately need recommendations for another way to do this.
Anybody know anything about this company? https://spotlightr.com/features/
Other video options?
@sundogplanets i'd recommend self hosting for the most privacy- using SFTP with logins that only can be accessed from the student's known devices (e.g. filter by IP and MAC address).
I use Github for uploading larger files which have an ease of free storage that doesn't count against my Gmail storage.
You could also use a Drive and get 15GB storage but Github lets you upload up to 100MB files from the desktop app: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/188694#discussioncomment-16042228 with private repositories only students access?
@sundogplanets
> another way to do this.
A sort of return to the past: ask the students to position their camera so you can see them writing a summary, answers, ideas – all in cursive on lined paper.
It might not stop them from feeding that lecture into the regurgirator first, but at least you'll be sure they read whatever that artificial idiot spits out about ;))
@sundogplanets please let us know which solution(s) you end up with
Can't be done. Anything transmitted over the web can be recorded.
Insist on in person only. You can pre-record your presentation, show it to the class, then do a q and a, but a whiteboard with you drawing examples (even stick figures) is better than a canned presentation.
And interact with the people at every step. Answer any questions immediately. Get them to participate.
The opposite of a PowerPoint presentation or canned video.
Limit it to a max of 10 people - 6-8 is better.
@sundogplanets My daughter complained about this in her math and physics courses. She's really upset, and so am I!
In her school's case, it's a company called HeyBoon. I haven't been able to find out much about them at all, beyond the fact that it scans her handwritten homework and the AI gives unsolicited step-by-step solutions to the problems if she misses anything.
Even her English class is introducing AI, but my kiddo complained, and the prof said she didn't have to use it.
@sundogplanets My company's LMS is built around Wista (https://wistia.com) for video hosting. It's...not great...but you can avoid most of the AI bullshit they've larded on.
@sundogplanets spotlightr is an iteration of vooPlayer, a marketing platform.
If you're concerned about cheating / AI scanning, when setting reading and or homework / tests add a sample of audio demanding some absurd task in mandarin to the video stream at the start and then at the end tell people to ignore the mandarin.
It may help. It may not. Do these students have to complete any sort of invigilated examination or is it all online?
@sundogplanets You could take a look at Galene.org - it is an opensource video conference engine built for a French university. Absolutely zero frills and needs hosting but pretty easy to run/manage. - I use it for work and @mcrscifi bookclub.
@sundogplanets My European stance is the privacy policy is American (Florida), and they have quizzes, and reporting etc. Not sure YouTube is much better, but you can choose between Unlisted or Private, while still having some accessibility features. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/157177 It will likely have transcription options, and I find CC (subtitles) useful when following lectures and learning vids. (but I'm used to/prefer book learning)
@sundogplanets What about any peertube instance? I'm using https://makertube.net/, and I believe that you can share links, while having them hidden by default.
opencast or big blue button?
@sundogplanets I'm afraid you're fighting a losing battle. Technically, there's no way to prevent a video stream from being intercepted – even if it means recording it with a camera.
We'll need different teaching approaches that take the presence of AI into account. Unfortunately.
@h_albermann Yeah, I'm also seriously considering not teaching online courses at all anymore.
@sundogplanets Take a look at Infomaniak's streaming service. https://www.infomaniak.com/en/multimedia/streaming/video
@sundogplanets I attended this year's Music@Menlo chamber music festival virtually. They used Vimeo and it worked well. Occasional audio dropouts maybe .1 sec long. Video was solid.
@sundogplanets Does it need to be behind some kind of login / authentication? What LMS are you using?
@floehopper Would be nice if it's not publicly searchable, but doesn't need password protection. My university uses moodle
@sundogplanets I hesitate to suggest it, if you don't have access to a NextCloud instance or similar and you're in a hurry, the simplest solution might be to publish on Youtube (or Vimeo?) and make the videos "unlisted". Then use the embed code to add the to content in Moodle.
Unlisted means it's not searchable and won't appear in anyone's feed. The downside is its probably relatively easy for someone viewing the embedded video to extract a link they could share with anyone.
haven’t done webdev in a hot minute, but here’s some ideas:
1. there was a whole host of modules to bridge #drupal with #moodle. drupal, in turn, has a whole suite of videoconferencing modules that could be adapted for your needs. drupal also has kickass permissions & feed syndication systems. so you can whip up private RSS feeds.
2. after 2020, universities were switching to #nextcloud to avoid Zoom. their media/comms features are excellent
3. both use OAuth/ActPub logins
@blogdiva Wow. This looks great! But is totally beyond my very limited skillset... I appreciate the suggestions though!
@sundogplanets does your university have an institutional repository? Maybe there.
@sundogplanets I probably sound stupid here, but what do you wanna achieve? Realtime online lectures? Or downloadable pre-recorded stuff?
I used in different settings BigBluButton, Jitsi and (hardly recall) Alpha video-call…
@sundogplanets
Hmm…almost as if the administrators are trying to replace the professors…
I eventually want to just make all my lectures public and post everything somewhere public, but that's not happening in the next 6 days for a course that I'm not even teaching myself.
Or maybe I just stop teaching online courses, which I originally started doing during the early pandemic days, then kept doing becuase it makes less work for the underpaid sessionals who teach my classes sometimes.
@sundogplanets have you considered sharing URLs to unlisted cloud storage with files? Or sharing between school-provided accounts which have cloud storage?
A few good suggestions so far, but here's more info because the questions made me realize I really didn't include enough:
I just want students to be able to watch pre-recorded lecture videos, semi-private. I don't want them to easily download videos (not sure if that's a silly ask), or easily feed videos/transcripts into gen AI. I DEFINITELY don't want them to have a built-in gen AI system that knows the video contents that they can get homework answers from.
My university uses moodle.
@sundogplanets I suggest Vimeo as well. It’s a solid video service with a lot of controls for what options are provided to the viewer.
It’s hard to stop a determined student from using the analog gole to circumvent restrictions, but Vimeo is good.
@sundogplanets it's hard to stop people from downloading videos if you want to. If yoh mean "no button for it" Vimeo or something might have a solution where you can add a password?
@sundogplanets vimeo is still a video distribution medium. Last time I checked, they didn't modify an uploader's video because their role is to let people upload video to be see as it was uploaded. Free yp to a certain volume and then you need to pay as the uploader to have your videos more widely seen.
@sundogplanets My university is on Blackboard. However, we also have OneDrive which I use to share content such as lecture slides, and recorded lectures (I have both prepared videos for the online class and those that I record live during in person lectures). OneDrive allows me to restrict who has access to the content (students have a live link in Blackboard) and can be configured to prevent downloads.
@sundogplanets you could potentially use Vimeo, but I don’t know what it would cost. https://vimeo.com/solutions/education-solutions
I'm migrating from youtube to posting videos on peertube -videos.trom.tf hosts education videos.
@sundogplanets I reckon what gets you closest is hosting the videos in your uni’s learning software, and setting them to “non-downloadable”, if the tool allows.
That’s not absolute protection against AI scraping/ usage, but it makes it harder, and maybe weeds out all but the most determined AI fans.
@sundogplanets Would you mind if I suggest what I've been doing freelance for a while, video indexing? The blurb is at https://miblo.net/cinera/#cinera
I think for you, either private videos on Vimeo or the plain video files self-hosted may be the way to go (both already supported). I've also previously written a login system for full-on privacy, in case you'd need that. (I'm keen to check out Moodle, though, which I'm guessing may handle logins itself.)
Here's an example, a public one, of how the videos end up: https://guide.handmadehero.org/code/day667/
@sundogplanets Not at all on topic of your post but... my grandfather helped build moodle! He wasn't the founder but he joined immediately and got to helping. He was moodle user #2.
@sundogplanets
Unfortunately, any anti-transcript barriers will also make your content inaccessible to the hearing impaired, which is particularly problematic.
@csaetre Yeah I know... there's no winning. :(
(semi-private means for this purpose, non-publicly searchable video platform)
@sundogplanets I just use unlisted YouTube videos so they have to have the url. I haven't had many issues with kids feeding it into AI, they just don't watch them at all 😂
@sundogplanets Google has a guide that includes a description of how to limit search. You can add a file named robots.txt but also configure a web site to use HTTP headers to indicate that a page should not be indexed. This may be good enough if your objective is to prevent content from showing up in standard search engines. It will not prevent someone from indexing it or copying it. You can protect things further by requiring a login to access the material.
@sundogplanets I think you can upload videos to moodle (not as a file to download but as a streaming thing)? May depend on your uni's settings. Otherwise a Peertube instance does the trick.
@sundogplanets Non-downloadable is a non starter, as the movie indusry knows. You can always do a screen grab and feed that into an AI.
Non-searchable can be done with robots.txt if the bots behave or with a access control via login codes or something like that.
@sundogplanets Just host it yourself? The bandwidth can't be that high for the videos if the audience is just your students. Then you have full control forever.
I don't have any videos, but I do that for my lecture notes. So much easier in the long run than using any online "platform". If I teach the course again, I can just copy the directory, update a few files, etc.
@sundogplanets Online isn't better for all disabilities, but definitely helps me to have it as an option.
I'm sorry your university has gone over to Zoom. I haven't used Zoom much lately, but last time I did I was really annoyed that they'd shoved AI in.
@ml Yes, that's another reason I like offering at least a couple of online courses. It reaches students who can't come to campus for a variety of reasons (including disabilities, or just living far away).
Zoom is fine for live videoconferences. It is AWFUL for recorded lectures. So frustrating...
@sundogplanets @ml How about Peertube and OBS? You could do a live stream of a lecture and later share the recording.
But how you get the university to install peertube?
I still remember the time when one only needed scp to share stuff.
@sundogplanets Ah, I didn't realize it was pre-recorded video you needed to host.
I boosted to see what others have to suggest. Hopefully someone knows something that will seem good for your situation.
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