How Educators Use Rev: Accessible Remote Learning

The impact of COVID-19 upon the world of education cannot be overstated. Across the world, from preschool through law school, learning environments were thrown for a major loop. But educators are resourceful and dedicated to their students, and they found a way forward. For most, that meant accessible remote learning. 

Students have always varied in their learning styles and attention spans. Without the ease of in-person attention by instructors, educators needed to turn to other methods. Today, we’ll cover how four different organizations stepped up to the challenge to keep their students learning.

Accessible Remote Learning for All

Most people just think of sports when thinking about university television. But there’s so much more to discover. The University Television Center (UTC) at Mississippi State University manages all non-athletic broadcasts. They also produce content for the university’s social media channels, educational outreach, and marketing videos for the university and its partner stations. It’s a busy place.

The UTC was on top of accessibility even before the pandemic sent their students and staff off-campus. First and foremost, the UTC needed to support accessible remote learning for students. But now they were also trying to reach the community at large. However, that community needed more than just the ADA-compliant captions UTC was familiar with. They needed subtitles in a variety of languages.

“It’s important for Mississippi State to be accessible to all those trying to get an education. Having accurate subtitles is a key part of that.” David Garraway, Director, University Television Center at Mississippi State University

New Institutions, New Challenges

Mississippi State University has been around since 1878. But our next institution is just about to turn two. And they’re located across the pond in North London. Oak National Academy was founded to support the struggles of teachers and students in the advent of remote learning.

Oak National Academy was founded quickly and it needed to ramp up its accessible remote learning strategy just as quickly. They came to Rev needing a large backlog of videos captioned quickly and accurately. The content needed to be accessible regardless of disabilities, native language, or immediate surroundings. It also helps make the content more engaging.

“On a weekday during term time, we have 220,000 users on the site every day,” said Jonathan Dando, Oak National Academy’s Director of External Relations. “Therefore, the accuracy, speed, and scalability of our captions are super important. And Rev can do all of those things for us. There wasn’t another platform or service that could have done that, particularly not with turnaround times. It’s incredible.” 

Message Received, Loud and Clear

Throughout the pandemic, the medical community fielded more attention than ever before. Medical and health science schools were no exception. At West Virginia University (WVU) the Health Science Schools turned to educational outreach. 

WVU Health Science Schools made brief, informative podcasts about individual issues. They informed listeners about the coronavirus. To make the podcasts available to everyone, they engaged Rev to create transcripts. This important information must be delivered quickly, widely, and accurately. These are just some of the rules of accessible remote learning.

“We’ve got some expert videos here, which thanks to Rev, I didn’t have to listen back to my awkwardness and transcribe or have to worry about captions on my dying laptop,” said David Ryan, Media Strategist for West Virginia University. “So cheers to that. Premiere hates me when I do captions. So thank God I can use Rev.” 

Legally, Accessibility is Key

Like many, the NYU School of Law had to move its students and instructors to a remote model. Soon, they discovered the importance of their tech stack like never before. Law school information must be delivered as precisely as possible for accessible remote learning to be a success.

Joe Rivera, a Media Production Specialist at the NYC School of Law, talked about never taking your IT support for granted. The right tools will make all the difference in a remote learning space. His team worked to prepare as much as possible, then maintained open lines of communication for everyone.

“We did a lot of training sessions in person while we still had a couple of days on campus,” Rivera said. “All of them were recorded and captioned. We got those transcripts, thank you Rev, to make sure that it did go out to anybody that couldn’t be there.”

The right tools, like transcripts, captions, and subtitles from Rev, will make all the difference to build an accessible remote learning environment. With proper accessibility, educational institutions can be a resource for their communities at large and not just students, faculty, and staff.