IT Services - Create a Playlist of Kaltura Media in Canvas

Overview

Users with instructor roles in Canvas can create playlists that reside in a Media Gallery. This tutorial walks you through how to create one.

These instructions are specific to users with instructor roles in Canvas instructors (including TAs and Graders)

Critical Concepts

Things to Keep in Mind

Playlists can only be users with instructor-like roles. Though students can add media to the Media Gallery by default, they're not able to create playlists. Anyone on the teaching team, however, can. This includes roles like Teacher, TA, and Grader.
You can either add entries from your "My Media" or elements that have already been published to the course's Media Gallery. This means that you can technically create a playlist with entries you don't own - provided they're already in the Media Gallery.
Playlists are course-specific. Playlists live in a Media Gallery, not "My Media," so each one is specific to a course. They can be copied to a new course along with the rest of the course materials.
You can put any type of media in a playlist. It doesn't just have to be videos. You can mix in audio entries, images, quizzes, etc.
Creating a playlist adds a "Playlists" tab at the top of the Media Gallery that is selected by default when a user lands on the page. We're not able to change which tab users land on by default, unfortunately.
Creating a playlist automatically publishes those media within the "Media" section of the Media Gallery. Course members can find the media within the playlist or as individual entries in the "Media" section of the Media Gallery.
However, deleting the playlist doesn't UNPUBLISH the media from the "Media" section of the Media Gallery. So if you don't want course members to be able to see those particular pieces of media, you'll need to manually unpublish them. See our tutorial on how to unpublish media from a Media Gallery if needed.

Steps to Take

If you're not already logged into Canvas:
1. Go to https://canvas.ucsd.edu.
2. Enter your active directory credentials.
Within Canvas, enter the course in which you want to create a playlist by either clicking on the course in your dashboard or clicking Courses and selecting the course.
Within the course navigation on the left side of the page, click Media Gallery.
Within the Media Gallery, click the Channel Actions icon (it looks like three horizontal lines) and select + Create Channel Playlist.
Edit the playlist title, description, and tags, as desired.
Go to the "Add Items To Your Playlist" section and click the + (plus) icon next to each entry you want to add to the playlist. The items you add will show up on the right side ("Playlist").

Tips for Creating Playlists

Use the search field. Kaltura will only show the 16 most recent entries in your "My Media" when selecting items to add to a playlist, so it's likely you'll need to use the search field to locate the media you want to add.
You can add entries that are in the Media Gallery. Use the pull-down menu at the top of the "Add Items to Your Playlist" and select "Media Gallery" to expose entries from the Media Gallery.
You can change the order of items you add to the playlist. You can drag and drop them using the icon that looks like two horizontal lines.

When you're done adding items to your playlist, click Go to Media Gallery at the top of the page.

If you still have questions or need additional assistance, feel free to contact us at kaltura@ucsd.edu.