Mediathread updates increase interoperability

by | Nov 5, 2015 | Announcements

logo_mediathreadThe Center for Teaching & Learning (CTL) has just released a mid-semester update for Mediathread, the collaborative multimedia analysis platform used in hundreds of courses at Columbia as well as at other universities. This release features a new Google Chrome browser extension, improves compatibility with external sites, and introduces Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) compliance.

Mediathread allows students and instructors to collect and analyze a variety of digital object – such as videos, audio files, and images – from across the web, through use of a browser-based bookmarklet. A new Google Chrome extension can now be used in the same way as the Mediathread bookmarklet. This extension was developed in response to a new security standard that some websites have implemented, and is easy to install. The Mediathread bookmarklet has also been updated to improve the experience of collecting media from supported collections.

In addition, Mediathread now complies with the Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) specification, an advance that enables some of its features, such as collection browsing and multimedia annotation, to be integrated into existing learning management systems. LTI support allows students and teachers to use Mediathread features with single sign-on authentication in widely used LMSs such as EdX, Canvas, and Moodle.

The mid-semester release also incorporates code contributed by developers at Dartmouth University, where the Media Ecology Project uses Mediathread to drive film scholarship. Thanks to this code, selections created within Mediathread can now be exported to the W3C linked data standard format. This standards-based export enables analysis conducted collaboratively in Mediathread to be imported into tools such as Scalar for visualization and publication.

Full release notes can be found on Github. Additional information on Mediathread can be found on the Mediathread information site. Instructors at Columbia interested in using this platform in classes are encouraged to request a Mediathread site or set up an informational consultation with Center for Teaching and Learning staff by emailing ColumbiaCTL@columbia.edu.