Can Accessible Tech Save Student Grades?

Improving and sustaining the grades of your students can be a difficult balance. Your own teaching abilities can be perfect, but without solid preparation outside the classroom, students may be limited in potential. However, there is something that will help tip things back into balance.

What if we told you there is an effective, efficient, and fast method of making class notes? An easier process of collecting what you have taught, and distributing it among your students, week by week, as you teach. What if we told you, it's possible to enhance academic success thanks to a few accessibility services?  Now, imagine that with a simple online platform, you can have access to some of the most productive and low-effort studying materials students can access today?

Captioning and transcription services are the perfect gateway to easy, cheap, and useful tools to maximise academic success. Here, we’ll introduce you to what captioning, transcription, and live note taking services are and how they can help you and your students.

What are captions?

Captions are an accessibility feature that makes audio content accessible to Deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences. Captions appear as text at the bottom of your video. This text includes all of the speech, narration and sounds in the original audio. Typically, the captions are produced by voice-recognition software which requires spoken text to be repeated onto a computer, creating the text. This text is then displayed over the video content and appears in sync with the audio track. 

For students, captions:

1. Make lessons more accessible (particularly for deaf or hard-of-hearing students)
2. Prevent missing any major points
3. Increase the potential of retaining content via reading 
4. Keep the attention on the content being delivered
5. Assist with understanding lesson content
6. Assist students with comprehending complex vocabulary
7. Help any students with English as an additional language

More info here.

What are transcripts? 

Transcripts convert audio into text for easy consumption. Transcripts are like captions, as they translate the spoken word into text, but rather than appearing over a video, transcripts are simply text documents. 

Many universities and schools provide transcription services to ensure Deaf and hard-of-hearing students can read what was said during lectures, classes, and tutorials.

To students, the many benefits of transcripts include:

1. Providing a written record of classes
2. Quick delivery within hours
3. Reliable accuracy and clarity
4. Good reference source for essays/assessments
5. Ability to track what the teacher has or has not covered
6. Reinforcing learning by being used as study notes

Transcripts also serve teachers, by:

1. Providing a backup of learning material
2. Evidence of what was or has yet to be taught 
3. Helping keep track of syllabus content
4. Being able to be easily distributed to the class
5. Allowing all students in the class to catch up
6. Being able to be posted online for educational purposes

 More info here.