PFRDG looking at “Students’ Experiences Using Live Captions and Subtitles in Class Presentations.”

 

Anymir Orellana, Ed.D. is a professor of instructional technology and distance education in the Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice (FCE&SCJ).

She received a PFRDG (now referred to as PRG) grant for her project titled “Students’ Experiences Using Live Captions and Subtitles in Class Presentations.”

 

 

Tell me about your recent grant-funded project.

My colleagues and I conducted a qualitative study to understand how students experience captions and multilingual subtitles during live online classroom sessions. Study participants were students enrolled in graduate and undergraduate online or face-to-face programs from various disciplines. All participants were fluent in English, had no hearing disabilities, and some could read two or more languages.

We used Microsoft PowerPoint Present Live (MSPL) to present with live automated captions and subtitles. Participants were remotely located, and we used Zoom to deliver the online presentation with MSPL, collect data, and interact. It is important to point out that we referred to captions as the transcription of the presenter’s spoken words in English and to subtitles as the translation into another language. Participants could select and follow the presentation in one or more languages of their choice.

 

This study has been completed and the findings include:

1. Overall, participants did not experience major technological difficulties when using the tool. Students were able to quickly troubleshoot the few issues that they did experience.
2. Participants found the tool easy to use, and the captions/subtitles were useful and beneficial. Moreover, they expressed enjoying the presentation content. Participants appeared excited when describing benefits of using captions and subtitles in live sessions, such as the possibilities of providing instruction from experts to a broader remote audience, and the learning reinforcement to various learner types. Overall, they perceived that the captions and subtitles were mostly accurate.
3. Regarding potential challenges, participants described as difficult maintaining their focus on the presentation while hearing the presenter and reading the subtitles in a different language that they were not fully fluent in. Their description appears to align with the split-attention effect that occurs when learners must divide their attention between multiple sources of visual information. Another potential challenge or weakness that participants described was the tool’s inability to recognize different language dialects, which caused inaccurate translations that can potentially lead to not being able to understand parts of the presentation.

 

Tell me about your research team

I was the Principal Investigator (PI) on this project and led the team from proposing the research idea and putting the project together to carrying out the research activities and disseminating the findings. My Co-Principal Investigators (Co-PIs) were Dr. Elda Kanzki-Veloso, Professor from the College of Psychology, who is also an expert in qualitative research; and Dr. Georgina Arguello, Associate Professor and Assistant Dean of Academic and Faculty Affairs for Bilingual Programs at the FCE&SCJ. Both Co-Pis participated with me in all research stages—from IRB to dissemination of findings. Katarzyna Wojnas, graduate student research assistant from the College of Psychology, assisted us with implementation of the project, data analysis, and dissemination of findings.

 

What advice do you have for other grant seekers at NSU?

My advice is to use the PFRDG (now PRG) to begin building the foundation for applying to larger external grants. Seek the advice of your colleagues and be open to interdisciplinary faculty and student collaboration.

Also, it is important to consider time management. No project should be underestimated in terms of time commitment, especially given the time-consuming nature of the grant process. Before applying for a grant, it’s important to be mindful of any time constraints you may have. Beyond the actual research activities – which include IRB processes, design, data collection and analysis, and the dissemination of findings through conferences and publications – the faculty PI and Co-PIs are expected to adhere to the grant’s timeline, while maintaining their full-time faculty responsibilities.

 

What is the next grant proposal or project on your agenda?

This project was a part of my research agenda in Universal Design for Learning. I am a native Spanish-speaking professor who teaches, practices, and does research in the field of instructional technology and distance education. I also have background in computer and information sciences.

I was fortunate to work with my friends and colleagues who also represent the diverse NSU population. We had been working on smaller projects on the same topic and we share the idea that research on the use of instructional technologies, specifically real-time automated captions/subtitles, is needed to better understand how they can be used for better and more accessible educational or working experiences.

I think a next step is to seek more collaborators interested in advancing this research topic. The recent progress in artificial intelligence (AI), coupled with its widespread availability, has enabled multilingual audiences to communicate more effectively, overcoming language barriers. I would like to better understand how AI-powered tools work and find how to best integrate them into the learning environment minimizing cognitive overload and distractions. For example, a possible venue is to explore the use of automated captions and multilingual subtitles in different scenarios where participants are not only reading the presentations but are also speaking in their native language in formal or informal unrehearsed scenarios, online or onsite. It would also be interesting to learn how possible inaccuracies in captions and subtitles caused by non-native speakers can affect the learning or meeting experience. Although these tools have improved in their accuracy, they are not yet ADA compliant. I hope this research can be adapted to include individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing, with visual disabilities, or who are not fluent in the language of instruction.

As educators, we need to implement best practices to maximize learning when delivering instruction or interacting in various scenarios. We need to experiment with the use of multimedia elements – such as still images, videos, captions/subtitles, and audio, whether in the same or different languages – to understand how addressing multiple stimuli simultaneously in live sessions impacts the learning experience.