Contents

Presenters

Sandra Partington – Principal Educational Technologist – Digital Accessibility, LEaD

Sylwia Frankowska-Takhari – (previously) Educational Technologist, LEaD

Natalia Czuba – Educational Technologist, LEaD

Workshop

Live interaction with you and your enthusiasm for your subject is an important element in learning. However some learners will have challenges when following and taking notes from live speech.

Taking notes requires simultaneous listening, looking, remembering, writing, within a time restricted environment e.g. a live lecture (Gribben, 2012), which can be a challenge for some learners.

Assistive technologies are designed to help people with disabilities or who are neurodiverse to carry out tasks and activities that otherwise would be difficult or impossible (Watson, 2022), in the higher education context some commonly used tools are captions on video, screen readers, text to speech, keyboard navigation and mind mapping.

In the workshop, the Digital accessibility team at City St Georges’ will share their findings of a recent evaluation research study, Evaluating students experience with the Caption Ed app to support learning (Czuba et al., 2025) which sought to evaluate the pilot implementation of Caption.Ed (CareScribe, 2020) which is an assistive technology for note-taking.

In the pilot 50 students from a range of subjects and levels had access to the tool, which was allocated by the disability advisor team. The study’s aim was to understand students’ experiences with using the service for note-taking and captioning in lectures and other educational contexts at City and assess its usefulness.

Caption. Ed has emerged as an asset for students with diverse learning needs, offering solutions that enhance accessibility, reduce stress, and improve academic performance. Students with hearing impairments appreciated the real-time captioning as a support for their hearing and understanding speech in lectures, positively impacting their learning experience. Neurodivergent students valued the service for its note-taking capabilities, which allowed them to focus on understanding rather than taking notes and alleviated stress.

The workshop format will enable a demonstration of Caption Ed and give participants the chance to briefly experience and reflect on these tools in action.

The workshop will include a 20-minute presentation and demonstration. There will be tables of up to 6 people and you will be asked to discuss aspects, such as the tools, note-taking in live teaching and to reflect on your own practice as a teacher or trainer. The aim is to explore the topic and tools together and swap notes and insights in an informal and friendly environment.

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Presenters

Workshop

References