Benefits of C-Print: What Does the Research Say?
What benefits does C-Print captioning provide compared to interpreting support services?
Research has played a key role in the development of the C‐Print service. An important function of this research has been to determine the extent that various features of the service benefit students. Following are research‐based answers to frequently asked questions about the benefits of C‐Print.
Since 1993, we have conducted a number of studies with deaf and hard-of-hearing (d/hh) students who are enrolled in classes where most of the students are hearing. The following research indicates that d/hh students understand and remember teacher’s lectures and other classroom information at least as well with C-Print as with interpreting.
In five questionnaire studies with deaf or hard-of-hearing high school or college students, students who had used C-Print services and/or who had used interpreting in classes were asked to rate as a percentage, the amount of information that they understood in class:
- In two studies, college students assigned higher ratings of understanding for C-Print than for interpreting, and the difference between the mean ratings for these two services were statistically significant in each study (Elliot, Stinson, McKee, Everhart, & Francis, 2001; Stinson, Stinson, Elliot, & Kelly, 2004).
- In one college study and two high school studies, students assigned similar ratings of understanding for C-Print and for interpreting. In these studies, the differences between the two mean ratings were not statistically significant (Stinson, Stinson, Elliot, & Kelly, 2006; Elliot, Stinson, & Coyne, 2006; Elliot, Stinson, Easton, & Bourgeois, 2008).
In five experiments with deaf or hard-of-hearing high school or college students, retention of lecture information, as measured by objective recognition and recall tests, was compared for video displays of C-Print and interpreted presentations:
- In one experiment with high school students and in one with college students, participants retained significantly more information from the C-Print presentation than the interpreted one (Marschark et al., 2006; Stinson, Elliot, Kelly, Liu, & Stinson, in press).
- In one experiment with high school students and two experiments with college students, there were not significant differences between retention of information from the CPrint presentation and retention from the interpreted one (Marschark et al., 2006; Stinson, Elliot, Kelly, Liu, & Stinson, in press).
In one study with high school students, classroom teachers were asked to rate student performance when students were using C-Print as well as when students were not using C-Print:
- Teachers rated students’ academic performance, learning vocabulary, and classroom participation higher when students were using C-Print than when they were not using CPrint (Elliot et al., 2006)
According to interviews with deaf or hard-of-hearing college students who used C-Print:
- C-Print includes more of the actual vocabulary used by the professor and this is beneficial for test preparation and learning the course material (Elliot et al., 2001).
What benefits does C-Print provide compared to notes from a note taker?
After the C-Print provider completes producing the real-time display for a class, this saved text is available for further study by students. To what extent do students benefit from this text, compared to benefit from notes taken by a volunteer or paid note taker? In one questionnaire study with high school students and three studies with college students, respondents who have used C-Print and note takers’ notes have reported that:
- They used the saved C-Print text for study significantly more than they used notes from note takers (Elliot et al., 2001; Elliot et al., 2008; Stinson et al., 2004; Stinson, et al., 2006).
- They used more study strategies, such as highlighting and outlining, with the C-Print text than with note taker notes (Elliot et al., 2008; Stinson et al., 2004; Stinson, et al., 2006).
What benefits does C‐Print provide compared to other captioning or speech‐to text support services?
To date, one experiment has directly compared specific speech-to-text support services (e.g. C-Print, Communication Access Real-time Translation [CART], other computerized QWERTY keyboard-based approaches, and other automatic speech recognition approaches). In this experiment there was not a significant difference between retention of information from a C-Print presentation and retention from a CART presentation (Marschark et al., 2006).
In the 1980s, researchers at NTID conducted a study that compared students’ ratings of comprehension of CART with comprehension of interpreting. This study also compared helpfulness of the text produced with CART with note taker's notes. Since the questions used in this study (Stinson, Stuckless, Henderson, & Miller, 1988) were very similar to those used in the questionnaire studies with college students who used C-Print, it is possible to infer from examining these CART and C-Print studies that:
- Both C-Print and CART provide comprehension of a lecture at least equal to that of an interpreter (Elliot et al., 2001; Stinson et al., 1988).
- Students rate the text provided by C-Print and by CART as more helpful than notes taken by a note taker (Stinson, et al., 1988; Stinson, Stinson et al., 2004).
- Mean scores for these two studies indicate that deaf/hard of hearing students' ratings of lecture comprehension and of helpfulness of notes for CART and for C-Print were similar.
Who can benefit from C-Print?
Proficiency in reading and writing is a determinant of benefit from C-Print. The minimum reading level for benefit is approximately the 4th grade. Preference for or proficiency in either sign or spoken communication appears unrelated to benefit from C-Print.
- Students with reading levels of 4th grade and above in the experiment with high school students remembered more information from the C-Print presentation than from the interpreted one (Stinson, et al., in press).
- Students who were more proficient readers in the high school and college experiments recalled more information from C-Print presentations than less proficient readers (Stinson, et al., in press).
- In one of the questionnaire studies with college students who used C-Print, more favorable ratings of the C-Print real-time display and the text were associated with higher reading proficiency (Elliot et al., 2001).
- In the two questionnaire studies and two experiments, neither self-ratings of preference for sign communication nor of preference for spoken communication were related to preference for or performance with C-Print (Elliot et al, 2001; Stinson et al., 2004; Stinson et al., in press).
What are other benefits of C‐Print?
- College students perceived C-Print as providing complete information that included all, or almost all the important points and details communicated in the classroom, even though C-Print does not provide a verbatim display of the lecture and discussion. This finding is based on an interview study (Elliot et al., 2001).
- The messaging, highlighting, and note taking features of the student (client) version of the C-Print software appear beneficial to many deaf or hard of hearing students. This finding is based on two questionnaire studies. In a study with high school students, 30 percent used one of these features of the software 5 or more times during a trial with CPrint (Elliot et al., 2006). Among these students, highlighting was the most popular feature. In a study with college students, 52 percent used one of the features 4 or more times during a trial, and typing one’s own notes was the most popular feature (Elliot et al., 2008).
- A new version of C-Print works with tablet PCs to provide two support service options for students who are deaf or hard of hearing. The first option provides captioning support and graphical information in real-time. The second option provides note taking support that is viewed in real time by the student. With both options, a student using a tablet PC can add their own notations. An interview study of teachers whose deaf or hard of hearing high school students used this support service found that teachers reported that class participation increased because students had a better understanding of the material (Francis, Stinson, & Elliot, 2008).
References
Elliot, L., Stinson, M., & Coyne, G. (2006, April) Student learning with C-Print’s educational software and automatic speech recognition. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Association, San Francisco, CA.
Elliot, L. Stinson, M., Easton, D. & Bourgeois, J. (2008, March) College students’ learning with C-Print’s educational software and automatic speech recognition. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Association, New York City, NY.
Elliot, L., Stinson, M., Francis, P., Coyne, G. & Easton, D. (2003, July). What’s new with C-Print? Paper presented at the International Instructional Technology and Education of the Deaf Symposium, Rochester, NY.
Elliot, L., Stinson, M., McKee, B., Everhart, V., & Francis, P. (2001). College students’ perceptions of the C-Print speech-to-text transcription system. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 6, 285-298.
Francis, P., Stinson, M., & Elliot, L. (2008, April). Using Tablet PCs to integrate graphics with text to support students who are deaf and hard of hearing. Paper resented at the PEPNet Biennial Conference, Columbus, OH.
Marschark, M., Leigh, G., Sapere, P., Burnham, D., Convertino, C., Stinson, M., Knoors, H., Vervloed, M.P.J., Noble, W., Madden, M., Jackson, L., & Grebennikov, L. (2006). Benefits of sign language interpreting and text alternatives for deaf students’ classroom learning. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 11 (4), 421-437.
Stinson, M., Elliot, L., Kelly, R., Liu, Y. & Stinson, S. (in press). Deaf and hard-of-hearing students’ memory of lectures with speech-to-text and interpreting/note taking services. Journal of Special Education.
Stinson, M., Stinson, S., Elliot, L., & Kelly, R. (2004, April). Relationships between use of the C-Print speech-to-text service, perceptions of courses, and course performance. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, CA.
Stinson, M., Stinson, S., Elliot, L., & Kelly, R. (2006). [Relationships between use of the C-Print speech-to-text service, perceptions of courses, and course performance in high school students]. Unpublished data.
Stinson, M., Stuckless, E., Henderson, J., & Miller, L. (1988). Perceptions of hearing-impaired college students toward real-time speech to print: RTGD and other support services. Volta Review, 90, 336-348.