Teaching approach

How the course teaches captioning, practice and feedback

Lessons are practical and built around sample recordings. You work on your own, then get specific feedback from the instructor who teaches that module.

Method

Learning by doing the job, step by step

The course teaches captioning the way a caption job actually runs. You start with the recording, move to the text, then timing, speakers and sounds, and finish with review and delivery. Each stage gets its own module, so you never have to guess what comes next or why it matters.

Every module begins with a short explanation of the task and a look at a good and a weaker example of the same passage. The comparison is deliberate. Seeing why one set of captions reads easily and another tires the eye teaches more than a list of rules.

You then practise on a sample recording. The material varies in speed, accent, background noise and number of speakers, so you meet the difficulties that make real work slow. Sample videos are chosen to be realistic for interviews, talks and event footage.

After each exercise you compare your work with the instructor's notes. Marcus covers transcription and review, Priya timing and file formats, and Elena speaker labels and sound descriptions. Feedback points to specific lines and explains the reasoning, so you can apply it to the next recording.

By the end you have worked through the whole sequence at least once. The aim is a method you can repeat on your own recordings, not a set of memorised rules.

Instructors

Three instructors, three areas of focus

Each module is taught by the instructor who works most in that area. Marcus has prepared captions for recorded talks and interviews for over ten years. Priya handles timing and delivery files, and Elena specialises in recordings with many voices.

6Practical modules
3Instructors
2016Teaching since

Teaching Approach

Independent practice between lessons

Most of your learning happens when you work alone with a recording. The lessons give you the method, and the practice recordings let you apply it at your own speed. Feedback then closes the loop.

Independent study is where captioning skill forms. Transcribing a three-minute clip properly takes time, and the habit of replaying a phrase until you are sure of it only grows through repetition. Lessons set the task, and you do the listening yourself.

We encourage you to work in short, focused sessions rather than long ones. Close listening tires the ear, and errors creep in when attention drops. A short session on one recording, followed by a break and a fresh read, tends to catch more mistakes than a single long push.

The review checklist is your main tool when working alone. It lists the points to examine: spelling and terminology, line length, reading speed, speaker labels, sound descriptions and consistency. Going through it in order stops you from fixing one thing while overlooking another.

When you finish an exercise, compare your captions with the instructor's notes before changing anything. Note the differences, decide which are errors and which are choices, and revise. Over several recordings the gap narrows, and you begin to anticipate the problems.

After the course you can keep using the same recordings and checklist to practise. Many learners return to an earlier module when they meet an unfamiliar problem at work, such as a noisy panel or a difficult file format.