Why should you consider captioning  e-learning videos ?

You know what? According to a recent study – “By 2019, about 50% of all classes will be delivered through online methods”, & of that“74% of students will watch them on their mobile devices.”

Also, the study continues by stating “Institutes currently implementing online learning methods see a significant growth to their revenue.”

Now, it’s quite obvious why many institutes have jumped into the stream of offering e-learning programs.

However, all e-learning companies have the responsibility to make their courses available to as many students as possible, including people with physical or environmental limitations. And, one of the quickest & easiest ways to do that is to caption e-learning videos.

Here are the top reasons, how transcriptions & captions help e-learning companies promote their educational videos.

1) Captioning e-learning materials makes it more accessible to the students

“Of every 1,000 students 3 suffer from hearing loss”states a research. So, ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) has enforced laws to make every learning material accessible to all Americans, equally.

By adding captioning e-learning videos:

• Deaf (or hard of hearing) students should now be able to comprehend your contents, which may otherwise be impossible for them.
• And, you satisfy the Disability Rights Section of ADA.

2) Your content becomes more accessible via Google search with video captioning

Google reported 2 trillion searches in 2016, which averages at about 100 billion searches a month.And, through the course of this year 74% of these searches will be for videos.

SEO plays a significant role if you have to bring your online content to the fore-front, and videos aren’t any different.

•  Transcribing e-learning videos allows Google to crawl through your video content and so index them via Google search (Google cannot listen through your audio, but can read through the text in its captions!)

Moreover, your students can also search the video directly through interactive player when provided with a transcript. This will help them jump to particular sections of your e-learning content, making it ideal for references and re-reads.

3) Benefits for You!

One; directly captioning educational videos can help grow their reach, but, the videos’ transcripts can be used for more than that.

Transcripts make content creation way easier. You can easily convert the text transcript for other promotional purposes.

• Your company can have your entire video transcribed, and then published as e-books or even text books.
• You can use the transcripts of e-learning videos for promotional purposes, such as to publish them in blogs, spin the content, post them as quotes or highlights in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
• You can edit the transcripts and use them as whitepapers and how-to material which can be shared across social media sites to position yourself as an industry expert.

4) From student’s perspective

In a another survey conducted recently, the participants (students)were asked “how often would you use closed captions?”, it was reported that about 26% stated “always”, 37% stated “often” and only others stated “rarely” or “never”. And, about 89% of them stated they would download the transcripts whenever available.

• Apart from aiding students with hearing difficulties, you also further your contents reach.
• Students are able to better focus on the lessons and subjects because the captions provide an additional input;that is, they can read along while listening to the lecture.
• Helps them retain information for much longer.
• It assists them when the audio quality is poor.
• Also, captioning e-learning videos will guide them through difficult vocabulary, which should improve their proficiency in the subject.
• Aids them learn from your research or course materials even in the silence of a library.

5) Helps professors reach more students

By closed captioning e-learning courses, professors & trainers become equipped to reach more students; even those learners who may not respond well otherwise.

• Captions nullify the negative effects of accents
• Trainers or professors from any part of the world can train students from opposite corners of the world
• Transcriptions are the first step towards translations
• Lecturers can publish their work as guides, which their students can download as study materials

Increase your reach

As the e-learning space gets crowded by the day, (even universities have stepped into providing e-learning options of their own). Provide captions to your videos and stand out from the crowd, to establish a strong online presence (SEO optimized), and become more student friendly.