Live Captioning for Live Lectures – An Initiative to Enhance Language Acquisition in Second Language Learners, through Mobile Learning

Abstract

World is networked through internet today. There are various mobile Applications, which help people in many different ways, based on the purpose of the application. Due to the pandemic lockdown, now-a-days, the classes are conducted online, through modes like, video lectures and video conferencing. Apart from the forced school environment, one can create their own environment to study through online classes. Apart from the established online courses that already have study material and subtitles, the live classes for under graduate students, who begin to explore online education, get the first blow in understanding and educating themselves. Many students find it difficult to listen to lectures through video conferencing because of a cluster of students with different proficiency levels. In a classroom scenario, with the use of blackboard method or power-point presentation, the students somehow get the idea of the subject. That way, if not by listening to the teacher, visual aids help the students to grasp in a better fashion. The purpose of this study is to propose the development of a mobile application, to reduce the difficulties in listening lectures online. The application might act as a caption provider in the video lecture that helps the students to comprehend the subject better. This study is based on a survey taken among 100 undergraduate students from a particular institution in India, to enquire the hardships and hurdles of learning through online lectures. The result of the analysis provided the preference of captioned videos in video lectures for enhancing the purpose of online lectures. This study tries to prove the hardships of non-native speakers of English, while attending video lectures and providing a solution to the aforementioned, based on the survey, by implementing the idea of a mobile application to provide captions, during the live lecture.