Canvas Discussion Boards: Best Practices for Including Files and Media in Posts

Panopto OneDrive

Students have a storage quota of 60MB in Canvas. This quota can easily be exceeded by inserting files and media into areas of Canvas that include the Rich Content Editor(RCE), particularly discussion board replies. Luckily, Canvas offers several methods for including media in posts that allow students to avoid using up too much of their user storage quota. Refer to the screenshot below of the RCE within a discussion board reply

The following are our recommended best practices for adding files and media to discussion board replies.

Powerpoints, PDFs, Word docs, etc (not audio or video)

Most files can be uploaded using the Upload Document button (#1 in image above, piece of paper icon). Files uploaded this way *do* count against your User Storage Quota, but typical Word, PDF files etc will not use up much space. You can also upload files by selecting Insert>Documents from the RCE Menubar (#2 in image above).
For larger files such as media-rich Powerpoints and large images, it is recommended that the file be hosted on MS OneDrive or Google drive. Then a link to the file can be shared within the post (How to Access OneDrive and Upload and Share Files and Folders).

Audio/Video files:

Share a link to the file hosted on MS OneDrive, Google Drive etc. Note: the video will appear as a clickable link, not an embedded video visible in the post. (How to Access OneDrive and Upload and Share Files and Folders)
Embed the video using an external tool. To do this, click on the electrical plug icon in the RCE Menubar (#3 in the image above). If you do not see the app you are looking for in the drop down list, select "View All." Select the app you would like to use:
- Panopto: FSU holds an enterprise licence for Panopto, and it is our recommended solution for recording, hosting and sharing audio and video. As a student, you may not be able to access this option if your instructor has not yet set up a student assignment folder. Communicate to your instructor if you would like to use this option but can't access it. See Panopto Student Video Assignment for more information.
- YouTube/Vimeo: Videos created in YouTube or Vimeo can be embedded using the electrical plug. However, this option would require that you have already created and uploaded the video to one of those platforms, using a personal account (FSU does not provision accounts for these platforms). IT cannot provide training or support for the use of these platforms, but there are many free training resources available online.

What about Attaching a File?

You may or may not see an option to attach files to discussion board posts (it is a setting that can be adjusted by the instructor). If it is enabled, you may see this feature as a paper clip button at the bottom of the text box (#4 in the image above). Attaching is different than uploading/inserting a file as describe above. Attaching any type of file is strongly discouraged, but especially for multimedia files, for 2 reasons: 1) Attached files *do* count against user storage quota. Attached files are the primary reason that students exceed their user storage quota 2) When classmates click on a file attachment, it downloads the file to their computer, instead of allowing them to view the file in a browser.

Additional considerations:

The above scenarios refer to using Canvas's native Discussion Board feature. There are other ways to facilitate sharing of student-created multimedia content between classmates. For audio and video, Voicethread is an integrated tool especially for facilitating multimedia discussions. Panopto can also be used for sharing video content peer-to-peer. Instructors: if you intend to have students creating and sharing multimedia content regularly, it is recommended that you implement one of these solutions.