Skip to content

The Benefits Of Lecture Transcription Services For Students And Institutions

conference, lecture, training for a feature about the benefits of lecture transcription services conference, lecture, training for a feature about the benefits of lecture transcription services

Students and lecturers often choose the flexibility and accessibility of virtual classrooms over traditional in-person settings. The arrangement comes with a lot of benefits for both sides. Plus, adding lecture transcription services can further increase the benefits for online students and facilitators. 

The pandemic’s isolation turned online learning from a convenient option to a lifeline for many students. Schools quickly adapted to the environment, and it’s safe to say that many flourished with online lecture arrangements. 

In this article, we’ll talk about how:

  • Lecture transcription offers significant benefits for students and educational institutions using video lectures. These benefits include improved accessibility, time savings, engagement and comprehension, flexible learning, broad language support, and SEO improvements. 
  • Lecture transcription takes advantage of the accuracy and speed of reliable transcription services to provide captions and transcripts.
  • There are pros and cons of lecture transcription using AI. Human transcription remains the best way to improve lecture content. 

Are Online Lectures Worth It?

Yes! A 2023 Tyton Partners and Every Learner Everywhere study found that 69% of 2,048 students prefer online or hybrid classes. This is no surprise since it still makes it easier for students and lecturers as they save time, reduce costs for both parties and make learning more efficient and convenient. 

How Does Lecture Transcription Work?

A 2023 Center for Universal Education study found that “lecture captures with captions can increase student comprehension by 8%.

Transcription is the process of converting audio to text. Lecture transcription can be applied in one of two ways. The first is through captioning the lectures beforehand.  

The lecturer or higher education institution can take a recording of live lectures. Then, they can submit it to the educational transcription service provider and receive a video copy with captions. 

The second process is for a student to take a recorded lecture and have it transcribed. Lecture capture is popular among students as it allows them to save information without taking notes. However, the drawback of lecture recording is that they would have to rewatch the entire thing or jump forward and backward to get the information they need. 

Transcribing the recordings makes them digitally searchable, making it easier to skim or peruse the material. This means students can learn from lectures at their own pace and save time. 

Benefits of Transcribing Your Lectures

Transcription services for educational institutions can significantly benefit the institution and its students. 

BenefitFor StudentsFor Institutions
Improved accessibilityCan learn from lectures at their own pace and in their preferred environment.Can cater to a wider range of learners, including those with disabilities or different learning styles.
Enhanced comprehensionCan review lectures more effectively and identify areas where they need to focus their attention.Can improve student retention rates and overall academic performance.
Increased flexibilityCan review lectures at their own convenience, even if they missed a class.Can provide more opportunities for students to engage with the material and make connections between concepts.
Broader language supportCan access lectures in multiple languages, making it easier for international students to participate in courses.Can reach a wider audience and expand the institution’s global reach.

For Academic Institutions

  • Adjustments and Improvements: Having recordings and transcripts of previous lectures allows educators to review their teaching techniques. This way, they can see what works, what doesn’t, and what to refine and reuse. This has a significant impact on learning outcomes for students. 
  • Accessibility: Many students learn visually, which means they take in information faster when reading them. Some, unfortunately, suffer from hearing disabilities. Transcription and captioning cover all bases by ensuring that lectures are accessible to as many students as possible. Furthermore, you can cater to different learning styles by providing students with options.  
  • Enhanced Engagement And Absorption: Studies like Captioning Online Course Videos: An Investigation into Knowledge Retention and Student Perception by Whitney and Dallas have found a statistically measurable improvement in student performance when lecturers utilize captioning and transcription. Specifically, captions help reinforce information to improve knowledge absorption, maintain focus and engagement, and enhance student comprehension. 
  • Sharing and SEO: Recordings of lectures can be uploaded to file or video-sharing sites like YouTube. Adding transcripts to videos can further enhance the content, allowing search engines to crawl through the entirety of the content, not just its metadata. This makes it more likely for the lecture video to appear in search engine results pages. 
  • Broader Language Support: Transcripts and captions can be an excellent tool for new learners. Instead of trying to keep up with the speaker, audio transcription allows them to go through the material comfortably. Furthermore, you can use transcription to translate the lecture into different languages. This broadens the reach of your lecture videos, making it easier for international students to access and watch your content. 

For Students

Students have been known to record lectures for future review. Having those recordings transcribed can add more benefits, including:

  • Time Savings: Let’s face it, not every lecture course will be slow enough to take notes. Sometimes, lecturers speak a mile a minute, blowing through topics like trying to beat a red light. It can be hard to take everything down, even in the best circumstances. Access to lecture transcripts can save students much time when reviewing or hunting for points and facts. 
  • Comprehensive Recording: Lecture notes are well and good, but, as mentioned above, it can be hard to keep up sometimes. Having an audio or video recording of your lecture can ensure that everything said gets saved for future reference. No need to fret if you’ve missed a lecture slide; just search the transcript for the last note and pick up where you left off. 
  • Study and Review: Listening to lectures all day can be exhausting. Note-taking may be a good solution, but sometimes, students miss important points due to either fatigue or multitasking. Having lecture transcripts neatly solves those issues by presenting a word-for-word topic recording. They’re digitally searchable and editable, which means anyone can easily copy content and paste it to another document for organization and easier studying. 
  • Referencing: Without making notes, it can sometimes be hard to pinpoint where a specific piece of information came from. The great thing about transcribing lectures is that you don’t need to worry about watching the whole lecture for one data point. Simply enter a search command and find specific portions of the text. Additionally, verbatim transcription can be used as is, so no detail is left unrecorded. 
  • Flexible Learning: Recording and transcribing lectures allow students to review the topics later in their preferred learning environment. They can learn at their own pace, according to their preferred method. 
  • Increased Attendance: A 2022 study by the University of Southern California found that “students who have access to lecture transcriptions are more likely to attend class, engage with the material, and earn higher grades.”

Types Of Audio Transcription Services

Different providers offer transcription for universities. Let’s talk about the two most common types you’ll find in the market.

AI Transcription

Automated audio transcription is the process of converting audio or video recordings to plain text content using artificial intelligence (AI) or automated speech recognition (ASR) technologies. 

This type of transcription leverages the speed of AI and produces lightning-fast audio and video transcription. Additionally, automated transcription software and speech-to-text services are often cheaper than human transcription. 

So, what’s the catch?

Well, for all its speed, AI is woefully inaccurate. Any advantages of lecture transcription are rendered moot at that point. 

AI transcription work is at the mercy of background noise, overlapping speakers, different accents and dialects, and poor audio file quality. It cannot identify nuance and utilize context to create a more accurate verbatim transcription—things that come naturally to experienced human transcriptionists. 

The text comes in an endless stream without punctuation or context. Students may use it for one-off transcription work, but not with anything requiring precision. 

For educators and facilitators, though, transcribing audio using ASRs and automated transcription tools is, quite simply, unacceptable. 

Unlike with a quick student note from a recorded class, errors in official lecture transcripts can have a negative impact on your students. Errors can be damaging and embarrassing, and information can be warped with a single wrong word. This can be particularly problematic for hard-of-hearing students, as sections of the transcript may make absolutely no sense to them. This can pull them out of focus and cost more time. 

Human Transcription

AI may be popular now, but Ditto’s human transcription service is still the gold standard for transcription. 

As the name implies, a human handles every step of our transcription process. 

Our specialists transcribe, edit, proofread, and polish, all with the sapience and awareness of a fellow human being. This is why human transcription is far more accurate, and that means wasting less time and money editing and modifying flawed transcripts. 

Yes, human or manual transcription can be a little more expensive than automated solutions – at the outset, however, it’s well worth it if you don’t have to review and edit your transcripts after receiving them. 

Furthermore, human-powered transcription offers many extra services, such as providing timestamps, following grammar and formatting guidelines, and converting complete transcripts to different file formats.

Accuracy. Accessibility. Affordability. Get Them All With Ditto’s Lecture Transcripts

Maximize the benefits of lecture transcription by enlisting the best service provider in the industry.

Ditto Transcripts guarantees 99% accuracy on all transcription work. Our team of professional transcriptionists can transcribe everything. Whether audio or video recordings of lectures, interviews, or meetings— you name it-we’ll do it with exceptional accuracy. Every transcriptionist we work with is under strict confidentiality agreements, so you can trust that any verbatim transcriptions are secure. 

We also offer expanded services, customization options, fast turnaround times, and affordable rates. Contact us today for a free trial.

Ditto Transcripts is a HIPAA- and CJIS-compliant, Denver, Colorado-based online transcription solutions company that provides fast, accurate, and affordable transcription services to companies and agencies of all industries and sizes. Call (720) 287-3710 today for a free quote, and ask about our free five-day trial. Visit our website for more information about our transcription services.

Looking For A Transcription Service?

Ditto Transcripts is a U.S.-based HIPAA and CJIS compliant company with experienced U.S. transcriptionists. Learn how we can help with your next project!