Best Practices for Using Multimedia in Your Online Course

Using multimedia (e.g., videos, podcasts) in your online course is a great way to engage students by presenting information in a different format. When creating and adding multimedia to your course, you should ensure that it will be accessible to all of your students. A few considerations are listed below:

• Utilize multimedia file types that will be accessible on various devices (e.g., mobile, Mac OS, Windows OS).
• Utilize multimedia that provides player controls (e.g., pause, go back to previous content, make content full screen).
• Provide accurate captions for videos.
  • The goal of multimedia captions is to make content easily readable and timed for comprehension when audio content cannot be heard. Automatic captions are typically only 75 – 80% accurate and have not been edited for grammar, punctuation, or time synchronization.
• Provide accurate transcripts for podcasts or audio files.

Captioning Resources

• Apply for the Proactive Captioning for Online Courses.
• Visit the Faculty Multimedia Center (FMC) to explore self-captioning options.
• “Ask a Librarian” for additional help. They have video resources that are already captioned.

For more information about ADA compliance and captioning, read “Why Automatic Captions Are Not Enough: Making Instructional Materials ADA Compliant“.