Improve Engagement, Focus, and Comprehension with Closed Captions for eLearning Videos

One simple addition to eLearning videos can improve learnerengagement with and comprehension of the material, as well as increasinglearners’ focus while viewing the videos. It’s closed captioning.

Many eLearning developers make two critical errors in theway they think about closed captions: They see captioning only as anaccessibility aid. And they assume that, since they have no deaf learners, theydo not need to implement captions. Actually, make that three errors: Manydevelopers also believe that, if they ever “needed to,” they could easily addcaptioning later.

Research around how people use closed captioning witheLearning videos or TV-watching debunks the first two errors, showing that theprimary reasons people use captions have nothing to do with hearing loss!

A 2006 UK study of television viewers found that 80 percentof the TV viewers who regularly used captioning had no hearing impairment. Theytold researchers that the captions helped them focus on and better understandthe shows they were watching.

A national study of US college students found similar usesfor captioning. Even though this study looked at higher-ed students, and muchof the research around the cost of retrofitting eLearning has been conducted atuniversities, the findings are relevant to eLearning developers in anyenvironment, particularly where adult learners’ responses can be separated fromthe larger pool of students.

Corporate eLearning developers should pay particularattention to how adult learners in the university study regarded captioning: 62percent of adult learners said that they find captioning “very” or “extremely”helpful when they view eLearning videos; 66 percent of learners for whomEnglish is a second language agreed. Only 1.4 percent of respondents said thatcaptioning was not at all helpful to them; 71 percent of the students surveyed,across all ages, said they used captioning at least occasionally.

When asked why they used captions, the most popularreason was to help learners focus, a response chosen by nearly half of the2,124 respondents. Helping them to retain information was a close second. Usingcaptions to help overcome difficulty hearing was a very distant sixth place,chosen by only 288 respondents! (Respondents could indicate multiple reasonsfor using captions.) Other uses included compensating for poor audio quality,using the eLearning videos in an environment where using the audio would bedifficult, helping learners comprehend vocabulary used in the eLearning, andaiding them in understanding a presenter with a strong accent.

Free-text comments from several students mentioned thatgetting information in different ways helped them learn. These learners’responses are supported by science that shows that people remember informationbetter when it is presented in multiple modalities. [Read more about multimodallearning in “Capture Learners’ Attention with Multimodal eLearning.”] It’s also one of the principles of universal design, which aims to make products, environments, andcommunication usable by everyone.

Retrofitting existing content may be unworkable—or expensive

What about that third error, the belief that it is simple to“retrofit” existing eLearning to add accessibility features if a learnerrequests an accommodation? That approach got some universities into hot water;Harvard and MIT are currently being sued over eLearning that lacks captions,and several universities have settled lawsuits over inaccessible eLearning. Sincemany corporations do not face legal requirements to make all learningaccessible, the argument for waiting until it’s “needed” could seem temptingoutside of the higher-education arena. But modifying eLearning in anyenvironment is a headache—a potentially expensive headache. 

The GOALS Project and the National Center on Disability andAccess to Education (NCDAE) published acase study that examined the cost of retrofitting college distance-learningcontent to make it accessible. They found costs ranging from a few hundred toseveral thousand dollars per course, depending on what needed to be done.Courses that included video that needed captioning were considered moderate tocomplex and cost far more to retrofit than simple, short, text-based coursesthat required only small changes, such as descriptive text for images.

A second GOALS case study that specifically addressedcaptioning looked at the cost of captioning all of a college’s eLearning. Thecase study estimated a cost per minute ranging from $1.50 to $2. While it mightbe possible to find captioning services in that price range, most professional captioningvendors charge between $3 and $10 per minute of video, although those ratesfrequently include both captioning and full transcripts.

Besides the actual cost of captioning, additional staff timeis required to identify which eLearning courses have videos, send the videos tothe contractor, and integrate the videos with the captions back into theeLearning courses.

To be fair, building in captioning during eLearning developmentis not free. An eLearning developer or a private captioning vendor still has tocreate the captions. However, integrating these costs into course developmentspreads them out over time, as eLearning modules are created, rather than incurringa large, unexpected cost at the time a learner requests accommodation—andavoids delaying a learner’s training.

But all of that sidesteps the point: Not all learners whowould benefit from captions have disabilities or are willing to requestaccommodation. Who could benefit? Any employee who:

• Is easily distracted
• Is struggling with new work-related vocabulary
• Is an English learner
• Works in a noisy environment or one whereplaying audio is impractical
• Happens to be an adult learner

The bottom line is, closed captioningcould benefit any or all learners. And who doesn’t want learners to increasetheir focus and engagement with eLearning? The catch is, eLearning developerscan’t know what difference captions will make for learners until they implementcaptions in their eLearning.

References

Linder, Katie. Student Uses and Perceptions of Closed Captionsand Transcripts: Results from a national study. Oregon State UniversityEcampus Research Unit. October 2016.
https://info.3playmedia.com/rs/744-UDO-697/images/Student-Survey-Report-10-25-16-Final.pdf

Rowland, Cyndi, Linda Goetze, and Jonathan Whiting. “GOALSCost Case Study: Costs of web accessibility in higher education.” GOALS Project(Gaining Online Accessible Learning through Self-Study). December 2014.
https://www.ncdae.org/goals/costcase/