Embedding a YouTube Video into Blackboard Using the North Institute’s YouTube Embedder Tool (show/hide)

Ingredients:

• Computer with an Internet connection
• YouTube Embedder: https://ed.oc.edu/ni/gdrivevid/index.html
• URL (link) to a YouTube Video
• Blackboard course shell

Getting the Embed Code for the Video

1. In your browser, find the YouTube video that you wish to embed into Blackboard.
2. Copy the video URL in the browser’s address bar and copy it (Cmd+c [Mac] or Ctrl+c [Windows]).
3. Open a new tab (Cmd+t [Mac] or Ctrl+t [Windows]) and browse to the NI’s YouTube Embedder tool and click YouTube under Embed Form on the left.
   1. We recommend that you bookmark the embedder tool page
4. Paste (Cmd+v [Mac] or Ctrl+v [Windows]) the video URL into the “YouTube URL” text box (when you click out of the text box a preview window will appear)
5. Set the following options (the default settings are most common and work well in most contexts):
   1. size (medium or large generally work well in Blackboard)
   2. start at time (optional) — use this if you want the video to start playing at a specific time
   3. end at time (optional) — use this if you want the video to stop playing at a specific time
   4. auto play — if you want the video to start playing once it has loaded, choose yes; otherwise, leave it at no.
   5. controls—if set to “show” it creates buttons that allow the viewer to play/pause the video as well as skip forwards/backwards into the video (none are present if set to hide)
   6. quality — you can use this setting to force certain video playback quality (e.g., high definition); default works sort of like “auto.” (Be sure to consider your audience and what Internet connection speeds they may or may not have)
   7. playback speed — use this setting to increase (up to double) or decrease (down to ¼ the normal speed) playback speed
6. Click into the text box containing the Embed Code, which will automatically select the code for you.
7. Copy (Cmd+c [Mac] or Ctrl+c [Windows]) the code.

Embedding the video into Blackboard

1.  Open another new tab in your browser and browse to the Blackboard course shell into which you would like to embed the video.
2. In the content area where you would like to embed the video, click on the Build Content button.
3. Under Create, choose Item (note: you can embed a video in any object that has a Description or Content field; I’ve chosen an Item for demonstration purposes).
   1. Give the item a name
   2. Click the HTML button in the third (bottom) toolbar above the content text box. [Don’t see three toolbars? Click here]
   3. In the box that pops up, paste the embed code you copied.
   4. Click the Update button.
   5. Set any remaining options on the item (e.g., track number of views, dates/times for display, etc.)
   6. Click Submit.

Once the YouTube video has been embedded into Blackboard, it can be toggled open by clicking Show video player or re-hidden again by clicking Hide video player.