How to put subtitles on your Canvas online courses?

Canvas is one of the most widely used LMS among universities and educational organizations. And that's not surprising! With its great ease of use, the platform is appreciated by students and teachers alike.

But learners can also benefit from advanced accessibility features, especially in terms of video playback. For example, adding subtitles can make online courses even more interactive and impactful.

But how to do subtitles in a simple and effective way? We tell you everything here.

Why add subtitles to your Canvas videos?

Canvas is popular among many educational institutions for its simple and intuitive interface, which integrates with a variety of IT ecosystems. All-in-all, the platform enables the delivery of a customizable educational experience.

But Canvas has also made efforts to improve the accessibility of this content to all types of students. With features such as screen reading, keyboard shortcuts and display optimization, visually impaired people can easily navigate the interface. But this also applies to the video player. You can easily add subtitles to your video content to help your deaf and hard-of-hearing students.

In fact, in addition to accessibility, subtitles offer many educational benefits:

• Sharing your teaching to the various languages and nationalities of your international students.
• Increasing the engagement and pedagogical impact of your content (better understanding and memorization of the message)
• Allowing your students to easily quote and bounce back on what you have said

Think they could be useful for you? Here are the different ways to do the job.

Canvas subtitles: ways of doing it

There is actually only one way to subtitle your online courses on Canvas: add a subtitle file (SRT or VTT) on the interface. But, to do this, you've got several alternatives :

• By trying to create it yourself
• You can try and use an automatic subtitle generator
• You can talk to a subtitling professional.

For the first option, we warn you, it is complicated. Transcription requires a lot of time and very specific skills, which are those of professional transcribers. The difficulty of creating quality subtitles should not be underestimated.

For the second option, automatic subtitle solutions can greatly facilitate the work, but still require human intervention.

For the third option, subtitling experts can handle your video projects with guaranteed quality results.

Here we present our professional subtitling solution, Checksub. It will save you time by combining the advantage of an automatic generator with the collaboration of experts.

How do I use a Canvas automatic subtitle generator?

Since speech-to-text technologies have become widespread, a growing number of subtitle solutions have become available on the Web. However, professional solutions are still the most reliable for high-volume, high-demand projects.

We present here our professional subtitle platform (in collaboration with agencies and freelancers). With advanced features, it enables you to :

• Automatically and accurately transcribe your videos (advanced speech recognition API)
• Collaborate with professional subtitlers and translators to manage your video project.
• Translate your video into more than 128 languages (translation based on in-depth learning)
• Easily modify and customize the appearance of your subtitles

This is the fastest and easiest way to proceed with our subtitling solution.

1# Upload your course on the interface

To get started, login to the Checksub platform. By logging in, you will have direct access to the platform to upload your video. Select your content and indicate its original language. You can also choose between several languages to make a translation if necessary.

To try the platform, you have one hour free. If this is not enough, you can buy credits at a low price.

The API will then perform the speech recognition and provide you with the result in a few minutes.

2# Check and optimize the transcription

When the result is ready, you can click on the language of your video and access the dedicated subtitle editor to check and optimize the synchronization.

3# Import the SRT or VTT file on the Canvas platform

Now that you are satisfied with the result, you can upload your .srt or .vtt file from the "export" button. Simply upload it to the Canvas video interface. If you don't find it, here's a guide for you.

Requesting a professional subtitling service

As you can see, creating subtitles is still a rather complex task.

We are well aware of this, which is why you can contact our professional subtitling services directly from the interface. These experts will take care of your video projects and deliver them on time.

You won't have to worry about that anymore, and you'll get a flawless result. Don't hesitate to ask for these services!

What are the educational benefits of transcription?

Another interesting pedagogical tool, video transcription allows you to provide additional support to your students. With them, you can also  convert your content into notes and documents!

Here are the various benefits you can expect from it:

• You provide visual support that your learners can easily take and memorize.
• You can turn your impromptu classes or video meetings directly into notes and learning documents.
• It allows an audience that has comprehension problems or wants to save time to read a summary of your classes.

Again, it is quite difficult to do this alone. There are many online transcription software on the market that will allow you to do it just as well. Checksub is one of them.

We'll let you try it all out. Otherwise, we hope we've helped you connect with your students!