Using Live Transcription in Zoom

Video meeting tools like Zoom are in a constant race to provide the most useful live meeting/teaching tools. Zoom recently added one such tool to it’s feature list: live transcriptions.

With the simple click of a button, participants in your Zoom meeting can now read everything said during the conversation. Also, both the presenter and/or the participant can save the transcript for later use.

Some immediate benefits of this tool come to mind:

The ability to review notes to deepen understanding
Provide students a different way to process information from the lesson
More support for students with auditory processing challenges
Another resource to provide students who miss class

Keep in mind that the transcription is far from perfect. There will be grammatical errors, misspelled words, and when participants talk over or interject the tool has difficulty identifying when one speaker stops and the other starts. With that in mind, the feature goes a long way in increasing accessibility for students.

Live transcription does not start up automatically, but is easily accessible on the main toolbar. To enable transcription, select “Live Transcript” and then select “Enable Auto-Transcription.”

NOTE: In order for students to take full advantage of transcription, they will also have to select the “Show Subtitle” option on their toolbar in Zoom.

Once you have enabled live transcripts, you will then be able to: hide your subtitles, view the full transcript of the conversation, and adjust your subtitle settings.

Hiding the subtitle allows you to… well… hide the subtitle on your presentation screen.

Being able to download the full transcript offers up some interesting opportunities. For example, it might be used for students who need a copy of the teachers notes as an accommodation. It can also be copied using the “save transcript” button. A teacher could then open the transcript, copy it over to the online Word app, and then translate it to a different language using the “Translate” tool.