Lecture Transcripts and Closed-Captioning: Addressing ADA and UDL at Rowan-Virtua SO
Steve Garwood, Dawn Shell, Jackie Giacobbe · 2023
At the Rowan-Virtua School of Osteopathic Medicine (SOM), recordings of all live lectures are available to students via the Echo360 Lecture Capture system. To improve the accessibility, usability, and usefulness of the recordings, beginning in the 2022-2023 Academic Year, we incorporated automated speech recognition (ASR) to create a transcript and closed-captioning for lecture recordings in the Synergistic Guided Learning (SGL) curriculum. For quality control, work-study medical students and volunteers reviewed and edited the transcripts and released updated versions for student use. Use and perceived impact were measured using a survey administered via Qualtrics. Eighty-eight percent of respondents indicated that adding transcripts and closed captions to the lecture recordings is valuable and should continue. Students remarked that they used the transcripts to clarify their notes and to search for key terms and concepts. The results of this preliminary study suggest the availability of transcripts and closed captioning for medical school lecture recordings may be a valuable resource for facilitating student learning.