Thoughts on transcripts for online training

I'd love to hear your thoughts on how to create transcripts for live zoom sessions

Jun 10, 2020

Beth Robinson

Consultant, Biodiversify

Thoughts on transcripts for online training

Liked by Adam Barlow and 3 others

Hello all,

Hope you are all keeping well.

We are playing around with ways to make out training more accessible and I'd love to get your thoughts.

Our training workshops consist of half pre-recorded videos and half-live sessions. If people request it I make the transcripts available for the pre-recorded sessions, however, I am struggling for effective ways to do this for the live sessions. There are people who would like these, for example, if they are hearing impaired or if English isn't their first language I am speaking too fast (usually because I'm over-excited). I know Zoom has the option of transcripts available after the meeting, but these only seems possible with a Zoom business account or higher, and you have to have at least 10 hosts for this which is not feasible as a small charity that only needs one.

I've been playing around with otter.ai software recording in the background during the live sessions, it picks up my voice, but it doesn't pick up that of participants very well.

If anyone has thoughts on how to make online training more accessible more broadly, please do share :)

Any thoughts are very welcome.

Thank you in advance,

All the best,

Beth

P.s. I realised there are not many people in this room! I've shared with my networks and hope we get more people joining soon :)

Beth Robinson (She/Her)

Consultant, Biodiversify

I'm a WildLearning Specialist with WildTeam, a bit of an odd job title. My main role is to design, deliver and organise both our online and class-based training courses. One of the best parts of my job is meeting other conservationists and learning about the work that they do. Before working for WildTeam I did a PhD in invasive plants and human-wildlife interactions. I find it really interesting to learn about the ways people interact with nature, both when nature is being wonderful, but also when it is being a bit annoying!

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Lucy Tallents

almost 4 years ago

Hi Beth, great question! Just to check, do you mean transcripts for sharing after the session, or live captioning during the session? These are both things I'm looking into as well, to increase accessibility, but I don't have any answers yet! I've heard good things about OtterAI, and that's what Zoom uses for its own captioning. Obviously you can repeat the question so OtterAI hears it, but that's not going to capture any back & forth discussion, or detailed nuances.

For post-session transcripts and captioning videos, I re-speak what I said using Dragon NaturallySpeaking, but it's not cheap and I'd love to find an open source alternative that approaches its accuracy. YouTube captioning is okay but requires edits with my British accent - I'm not sure how accurate it is with non-US or British accents as I think training datasets are still dominated by those accents, although I imagine its improving all the time. Does anyone else know?

Quick question - Can you train OtterAI to your voice and technical vocabulary, or even just select a regional accent to improve word recognition?

Beth Robinson

almost 4 years ago

Hello Lucy :)

Thanks for your thoughts.

I would like to be able to do both. I'm am trialling otter.ai for sharing after the session but I am still on the free trial while we decide so understandably I don't have access to everything. Interesting that Zoom uses otter.ai, that gave me the confidence to explore it more.

I have found that you can create custom vocabulary and you can teach it your voice, they call it 'voiceprint', it seems pretty simple so I don't know how much it is learning in the short amount it gets you to say.

I've found that there is a Zoom app with otter.ai, which allows live transcription, details here. You need the paid version of otter, for which you get 1-month free trial. I'm going to give it a go and I will report back soon! I think if we go with the paid version we get credit for recommending people, so let me know if you decide to sign up.

I have a copy of Dragon Naturally speaking, but annoyingly it is a really old version that doesn't work the latest version of windows.

Hope you are well.

Beth

Beth Robinson

almost 4 years ago

Hello,

Just a quick update to say I used the otter.ai plugin with zoom last night for a training session and it worked surprisingly well! Participants have a link to the transcript if they wish to look at it. The transcription wasn't perfect, but better than it was last time so I'm really please with that and will offer it with all our training sessions from now on.

I'm going to look into the best way to share transcriptions post-session very soon but I know you can export pdfs of the transcripts which sounds straightforward.