Linking to Clips
You can stream an entire film over the Internet if the university owns a digital license of the film. The O’Neill Media Center has a limited number of digital licenses (to see a full listing, please visit http://www.bc.edu/libraries/about/services/media.html).
If the university doesn’t own a digital license, the entire video cannot be shown over the web due to copyright restrictions (please refer to Dissemination of Copyrighted Material and "Fair Use Guidelines for Educational Multimedia"). You can show clips from a video as long as the "teachable moment" does not exceed 10% of the entire video.
Finding Time Segments for Clips
To show clips, you can establish a URL based on specific time segments.
- Find the URL for the streaming video by contacting firstname.lastname@example.org.
- View the streamed video and write down the beginning and ending time of the "teachable moment."
- Create your URL pointing to the "teachable moment" by following this formula:
- Put this link in your Blackboard Vista course. To comply with copyright restrictions, the URL must be placed in a password-protected site.
Example: The Theban Plays: Oedipus the King
Entire video is 120 minutes. If you wanted to only show a 7 minutes and 41 seconds clip (start time-1:10:39 and end time= 1:18:30), the URL would be:
If you have specific questions regarding using copyrighted material in your course, please contact email@example.com
Adding streaming media links to a Blackboard Vista site:
- Navigate to the homepage, folder or learning module where you wish to add the link.
- Click the Add Content Link button at the top of the page to open that menu.
- Select Web Link.
- Fill in the information as prompted. In the web address field, highlight over http:// to select it and copy and paste the URL you created following the directions above. Note: for the title, use the title of the video or something else other than the URL itself; this should never be visible to the students.
- Click Save
If you have any questions or would like further assistance, please contact firstname.lastname@example.org.