Abstract Lecture capture is ubiquitous in higher education. Lecture capture recordings are typically accompanied by automatically generated closed captions that are sometimes corrected by humans. Students self‐report that they benefit from captions, and particularly human‐corrected captions. However, multimedia learning research suggests that simultaneous spoken and written information impairs learning. Experimental tests of the pedagogic benefits of captions in authentic higher education learning contexts are sparse. Consequently, we block randomised 144 undergraduate psychology students to 12 sets of lecture capture recordings with uncorrected, corrected or no captions then assessed their understanding of these materials with 12 quizzes. Our pre‐registered analyses indicated that the differences between conditions were trivial ( M η 2 = 0.01; | M | δ = 0.12) and that the captioning conditions to which students were randomised did not influence their quiz performance. Follow‐up surveys re‐confirmed that students believe captions are beneficial for multiple reasons (eg, improved comprehension and focus; study efficiency; accessibility), and prefer corrected over uncorrected captions, even though they do not always notice the difference. As they do not impair learning, do meet accessibility requirements and are valued by students, automatically generated captions should be used routinely. However, correcting them may not reflect an optimal use of resources. Practitioner notes What is already known about this topic Closed captions are widely used by young people, who self‐report that they benefit from captions on lecture capture recordings. Multimedia learning research indicates that simultaneous spoken and written information can impair learning. Little is known about the pedagogic benefits of captions in authentic higher education learning contexts. Even less is known about the consequences of small but regular errors in automatically generated captions, despite the widespread use of such captions in higher education. What this paper adds We randomised students to 12 sets of lecture capture recordings with uncorrected, corrected or no captions, then assessed their learning with 12 quizzes. The captioning manipulation did not influence quiz performance. Students self‐reported that captions are beneficial and preferred corrected over uncorrected captions, even though they did not always notice the difference. Implications for practice and/or policy Captions help universities meet accessibility guidelines and are valued by students. Automatically generated captions should be used routinely. Manually correcting them may not reflect a good use of resources.
Allen et al. (Wed,) studied this question.