Teaching & Learning

Sharing videos

Woman sitting in front of desktop computer

If you made your own video

If you have found an existing video online, you can skip these first two steps.

Step 1: Getting the video file

As mentioned above, you’ll often need to start by making the decision where you’d like the video to be uploaded to. Getting to that point  is a little different depending on which tool you used to create your video:

Step 2: Uploading the video file

If the tool you used generated a video file that you then need to upload somewhere, there are a number of options for hosting.


Image of young woman looking at a video in MyLO

Presenting the video

Whether you found or made a video, the final step in sharing is to consider how it is presented to students as a resource.

Embed in MyLO content

A common way of presenting videos to students is within MyLO Content pages – in this scenario, to “embed” a video means to insert the video so it can be played within a webpage. An advantage of this is the ability to add context (e.g. text preceding the video explaining relevance). It also means that students don’t have to navigate away from the flow of learning content and activities – the video appears as part of the page.

Videos embedded in a webpage are generally 'streaming media' - they are downloaded as the viewer watches them. For students with good connectivity this is fine.

Unless there's a technical problem with this option, embedding your video is a good default sharing option.

Provide a link

If you have found a video, it is not always possible to 'embed' the video on a MyLO page because some platforms (or settings on individual videos) won't allow this.

One way to direct a student to a video on an existing webpage in this situation is to add hyperlinked text, like this example:
So many cute kittens compilation 2018

One reason you might choose to use this approach, is when the video is a supplementary resource which you don't want to appear in the primary flow of content.

Provide a downloadable file

Sometimes it is useful to make it easy for students to download content to watch offline (rather that 'streaming' the video at the time of watching it). When unreliable internet access is an issue, this can be a good option.


cursor hovering over transcript link

Providing a text alternative

As mentioned in relation to each tool, is is important to provide a text-based resource for every learning resource of a different type (such as an image, video, or audio file). This is an accessibility requirement - ensuring access to the content of the video for the widest possible audience. It often benefits students who don't have any disabilities, but appreciate the alternate presentation of information (e.g. some students have reported appreciating transcripts as they find annotating them helpful).

Common examples of a "text alternative":

  • Captions for the video(on-screen text)
    This is a great option if you have found a video which already has captions/subtitles. Depending on how you are sharing your video, you may also be able to add captions to your video by allowing them to be automatically generated, manually entering them, or some combination of the two approaches.
  • A transcript of the video (e.g. a separate document providing the content of the video)
    This is logical if you already have a document e.g. if you have recorded a presentation and read from a script, you could provide students
  • A completely different text-based resource which provides an equivalent learning experience (e.g. if the video presents a case study, you could link to an online article describing an alternate case study conveying the same core content).
    This might be  a good fallback where there are barriers to providing one of the above two options.


This is a new resource and we would appreciate your feedback.