Managing Paid and Free Seats in Vosaic (and Getting Students In Through LMS)

Vosaic’s seat model is simple once you think about it in two steps: first the role, then the seat. This article explains how roles work, how to use an LMS (Canvas, Brightspace, Moodle) to put students in the right role automatically, and the other ways students can access Vosaic.

Understand roles before you think about seats

Every user in Vosaic has a role, and the role determines whether they use a paid seat or a free one.

• Viewer — free. Viewers can watch, mark up, and annotate videos that have been shared with them, or that they've uploaded while in a Learner role. They cannot upload or record. Put students here when they don’t currently need to upload.
• Learner — paid. Learners can upload and record their own videos. Put students here only while they actively need to upload.
• Educator — paid. Faculty should always be in the Educator role and stay there. This lets them manage student roles and create Projects/Assignments.
• Administrator — paid. Typically IT, or a coach who also manages single sign-on, LMS integration, and platform-wide settings.

The key idea: a student doesn’t have to stay in a paid Learner seat all year. Move them to Learner when they need to upload, then back to Viewer when they’re done, freeing that paid seat for someone else.

Let students upload through an LMS (Canvas, Brightspace, Moodle etc.)

For simplicity of this article, we'll use Canvas as the LMS.

When you create an assignment in Canvas, Vosaic lets you create a Project that students submit their assignment videos to. During that setup, Step 3 has four checkboxes — here’s what each one does and why it matters:

• Promote users who use this link to a Learner role — automatically gives students who click the Canvas assignment link the ability to upload videos.
• Allow anyone who clicks this link to upload videos to the selected Project — automatically adds those students to the correct Project in Vosaic.
• Add anyone that uses this link to a Group — If you've set up Groups in your Vosaic, you'll see this option. It lets you later move students between Learner and Viewer roles as a group, which is how you manage paid vs. free seats easily instead of one student at a time.
• Enable grading — lets you enter a grade in Vosaic that transfers automatically back to Canvas. 

If your institution’s Canvas is set up correctly, doing the above means students can upload to Vosaic simply by clicking the assignment link in Canvas — no separate login required to get started.

The key idea that saves time: when a student clicks any Vosaic link in Canvas, they're automatically added as a user in a free Viewer role to your Vosaic account. This means that you don't have to manually add users to Vosaic. Additionally, when "Promote users who use this link to a Learner role" is checked during Canvas assignment setup, those users are automatically promoted to a role that allows them to upload videos. 

A bonus: easier password setup for use outside an LMS

Students who first access Vosaic through Canvas (or other LMS) can set up a standalone password later with no extra steps from you:

1. Students go to https://vosaic.com/login
2. Click Forgot Password
3. Enter the same email used to log in to Canvas
4. Vosaic emails a link to create a password (make sure to check spam folders)

With that password, they can access Vosaic directly, outside of Canvas.

Adding students manually

As a user in an Educator or Administrator role, you can always add students yourself: go to the Users tab and click Add User.

Quick reference

* When a user is switched from a Learner role to a Viewer role, they retain access to videos they've recorded or uploaded.

The one habit that keeps costs down: move students into Learner only while they’re uploading, and back to Viewer when they’re done. Using the Group checkbox at assignment setup makes that a bulk action instead of a one-by-one chore.