Jaime Diaz: It's about accessibility. I mean, you use,
people have asked me what do you use to teach? What technology?
And I answer sometimes, with just "Yes." Anything.
Narrator: One of the newest teaching tools is video capture services such as Panopto.
They allow faculty to easily record their lectures and post them on a Web page
where students can view them after class.
Jaime Diaz in class: And look at how he says this. So– it wasn't unpleasant.
It was an intoxication but it wasn't unpleasant.
And... stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes
Narrator: Panopto allows captions to be added to the recorded lectures.
Those captions are a necessity for students with hearing impairments.
Jaime Diaz in class: kaleidoscopic display of colors...
Jaime Diaz in class: This kaleidoscopic thing comes up often and often, right?
So this is like, wow, this is tremendous, but he didn't know what was going on.
Erika: Me, as a deaf person, I'm missing out probably three-fourths of the information
that's out there.
So captioning is a big thing for me because that's where I get all the information.
Jaime Diaz: I was surprised when I canvassed my students,
and over 30% said they were using the captioning
and I know that there's not 30% of hearing impaired or need for it.
And I asked a couple of students,
and they said they wanted to see the words as well as hear the words.
Erica: Other reasons why students like me use Panopto
is because he talks really fast in the lecture because we have so much material to cover,
so when I miss something I write down the time on my notebook
and I go back to the Panopto recording so that I can listen to it again.
And I'm like, "Oh, so that's what he was saying," and I understand the whole material better.
Steven: I do use the Panopto videos, particularly when I'm reviewing material.
I like to, as I'm reading through the lecture slides, I like to replay the lecture videos
to just reinforce and make sure I'm picking up any supplemental information
that he says while he's reading through it.
Sheryl Burgstahler: Other key people can benefit from the combination
of the visual text along with the audio.
This includes people who are English language learners
that would like to hear the word as well as see the word.
Aditya: I don't think most of the, all the students do understand all the time
what the professor is talking.
It is sometimes necessary to have captions
so that we can actually jot down things by having a visual.
Sheryl Burgstahler: Also benefiting from that
are students who have some types of learning disabilities
that can benefit from this multimodal presentation
and students that want to learn the spelling of a particular word.
Steven: One is, it reinforces what I'm hearing
so I'm seeing it both visually and getting it auditorily,
so we're hitting multiple systems at the same time,
creating stronger associations.
Second is, a lot of times I can have difficulty understanding
exactly what some people are saying because when you get into technical terms and jargon
they're talking so quickly it can be very hard to keep track of.
So being able to read it as I'm hearing it
further reinforces it and also helps me with grammar and spelling.
Narration: Captions can be useful to any student trying to watch the video
in a loud room or in a room that's very quiet.
Eelane: I use captions when I'm in a quiet library
and I don't want to turn up the volume too loud so I turn on captions
and I can see the words instead of hearing them.
Narration: Panopto also enables students to do a keyword search
to find every instance when a word appears in the lecture
and to fast-forward to that moment.
Sheryl Burgstahler: For instance you might want to look through those captions,
search through the captions,
to find a particular part in the video where your instructor presented something
that you want to listen to again without listening to the whole video.
Richard Ladner: If you have the captions now you have a way of searching.
You can search the video to find the word you're looking for
and then play that little piece of video back.
So everybody benefits from captions because they allow for search of video.
Jaime Diaz: You just have to try different things,
and so as tools come up you should try them
to see if in fact that might maybe replace a tool
or might hit a population that you weren't hitting before.
As a teacher, I have the obligation of reaching those students.