How to use Panopto to deliver and develop practical skills with your students
Challenge: To develop practical based skills through digital methods
Activity overview:
This activity uses Panopto to pre-record a demonstration of a practical skill. The students can then use these as ‘training/review’ videos to practice this skill. This can work well as part of an online lecture when demonstrating techniques as well as an asynchronous (pre-learning) activity.
Acquisition
ABC – Production Type Activity
This activity relates to the ABC activity type of Acquisition and will enable students to learn about new skills through technical demonstrations.
Activity in practice:
Academic: Mrs Ann Draycott
School: Lincoln School of Design
Ann Draycott develops a wealth of video resources to guide students through technical procedures. This flipped-classroom approach allows students to attend workshops prepared and informed, and allows independent study and review of technical detail, making workshop time more efficient. A video library, filmed on mobile devices and uploaded to Panopto, allows students’ flexibility in their studies.
To find out in more detail how this activity was embedded. Click here
▼▼ Scroll down to find more instructions on preparing & running this activity ▼▼
Benefits of activity:
- Enables students to learn practical skills and techniuqes at a distance
- Students can utilise this resource throughout their course for revision purposes
- Provides experential learning, empowering them to learn alongside the video resource and embed this new technique into their practice
Instructions & Related Resources
Below you will find some instructions relating to the activity mentioned above to enable you to adapt this activity for your subject area. This is split into three sections for your convienience: Preparing the activity, running the activity and related resources. Feel free to let the digital education team know how you have adapted this activity.
Recommended tools

Preparing the Activity
- Decide what practical element you would like your students to learn
- (Optional) Write a narrative to describe the technique. This can help you create an easy to follow video and an accessibility transcript for review.
- Create video with phone or external camera using Panopto.
- Edit video using Panopto or external software.
- Save/upload video to Panopto.
- Add videos in convienient location on Blackboard.
Running the Activity
Below is one example of how this activity can be used with students.
- Add video to Blackboard with clear instructions of how to use it and what task they need to complete with this.
- Allow students time to watch and practice this new tecnique
- Get students to share images/video of them applying this technique
- Give feedback to students on the use of the technique.
Related Resources
Helpsheet | Downloading Panopto for iOS | Internal Link
Helpsheet | Downloading Panopto for Android | Internal Link
Staff Helpsheet | Embedding Panopto Videos into a Module Site | Internal Link