How Has The Pandemic Affected Academic Transcription?

The academic industry has many uses for transcription services. Not only are they used to keep accurate records of modules completed, and help with keeping track of a students academic performance across different institutes. They can also be useful when it comes to teaching students; it allows for documents to be produced that can be referred back to at a later date. 

This article will explain how the global pandemic has affected the academic transcription industry as well as discuss how academic transcription has benefited from the education system. 

Remote Learning:

During the pandemic all learning was switched to being done remotely, this means that being face to face with your tutor was not an option and lectures and seminars were switched to being done via platforms such as Zoom and Google Meets. 

The main issue caused by learning in this way, is the fact that it is difficult to ask questions. It is not as simple as pulling your tutor aside and asking for extra support, or arranging a time to go over bits that were not quite understood. There was a barrier created by waiting for email responses, and even then, you may not get the same support you would have done in person. 

Not only has remote learning affected the student and teacher relationship, it has also affected the relationship between the students and other class members. Whereas people find it helpful to reach out to other classmates for help in areas they might be weaker in, remote learning has also made doing this more difficult. 

How Has Academic Transcription Made Remote Learning Easier?

Academic transcription services have become more useful during the pandemic as they have helped make the remote learning process slightly easier in a number of ways. 

One main use of academic transcription during these times is having lectures and seminars transcribed into text to allow for students to have a document to refer back to if they need to. This is also useful if someone missed the talk itself for any reason and allows for them to catch up on missed information. It also gives them another way of digesting the information instead of just listening and writing notes. 

Spending the time writing out notes alongside someone talking means that you often miss out what is being said. This can lead to gaps in knowledge. These gaps can be reduced with a text copy of the talk, as you can either go back and make notes at a later date, or simply highlight the key, most important points.

Not only are lectures and seminars transcribed, any group discussions or debates can also be transcribed to read back on if required.The fact that they are also transcribed word for word by professionals, means that they are highly accurate and can potentially be quoted within essays. 

How Have Transcription Companies Kept Up With The High Demand?

With most universities switching to online teaching methods, as well as the academic industry realising the benefits that transcription holds for them. Academic transcription is in a higher demand than ever before. 

This means that transcription companies have had to adapt to be able to keep up with the workload. Many companies have introduced machine transcription as a method of quickly transcribing documents. However there are many reasons as to why this may not give you the most accurate results. One of these reasons being the fact that machines have trouble separating speech from background noise. 

Another method that has started to be used more often is offshore transcription services. This is where the files are sent off to freelancers worldwide to be transcribed. This is a cheaper method, and allows for more transcriptionists to be available. This method also has various risks when it comes to accuracy due to the fact that you can not guarantee the person doing the transcribing is fluent in your language. 

To Summarise 

The pandemic has had a massive impact on the transcription industry in general. Not only is there more demand for this within the academic world due to many courses heavily relying on remote learning during lockdown. There are many other industries that since lockdown require transcription services more than usual. This has meant that the transcription industry has had to keep up with the demand by introducing different methods of transcribing.

However this has caused a rush in how the transcription industry has had to evolve. This leaves us to make decisions based on what methods are not only going to give us the quickest turn around, but also a highly accurate result.