Reba

Question for the students:

Do you have any experience with having a college class interpreted by video phone rather than a live interpreter? What was it like? Did it allow you to move around the classroom easily? Was it easy to interact with hearing classmates?
Were you satisfied with that method? Which do you prefer, live terp present in the classroom, or video terp interpreting from a distant site?

Question for the terps:

Have you done this kind of assignment? What are the pros and cons of your experience?

Deafness

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CrzyMeg

I rather have live in classroom.

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Etoile

Wow...I've never heard of such a thing, and I can't really imagine it myself. So much information is presented non-verbally in a classroom - notes on the blackboard, class handouts, etc - that I think using a video interpreter would be very difficult. The interpreter wouldn't be able to get all the necessary info to do a good interpretation, and thus the student would miss out on some information.

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ismi

I know you asked for interpreting, not CART, but some of the issues are the same, so I thought I'd share.

I've used remote CART a few times. Never in class - my university has a relationship with a local group of CART providers who only do non-remote CART - but I've been to a few events that were remote CART'd.

The set up is basically this: the interpreter or provider is present via two programs: one displays the text they're CARTing (I think via a web-ish interface - some sort of AJAX-y HTML, perhaps?), and the other is a VOIP phone, usually Skype. I've never been involved with setting it up, so I don't know if they provide the laptop, or if they just send the organizers a disc with the software and tell them to set it up on their own laptop. Anyway, they get called on Skype maybe 5-10 minutes ahead of time, and test that they can hear what's happening at the event, and that their text is showing up on the screen.

I'm a big believer in VOIP and Skype; but they're not ready for this yet. Nor, I think, would it be any better using a regular landline phone. Disconnections are common; even more common is that the provider can't hear well enough to provide the sort of service that they would onsite. The incentive to provide this sort of service is obvious; it's much cheaper for consumers, and involves less travel for the provider. But as far as I have seen, it's a much less polished 'product' than can be provided in person.

*If* you had only one lecturer, who was mic'd, and *if* the interpreter/CART provider was thoroughly briefed ahead of time on the topic, I could maybe see it working out. But getting contextual clues from what you can see makes a huge difference, and I don't think the audio tech is ready yet to deal with a lecturer, questions from the audience, and so on and so forth. That said, if I used interpreting rather than CART, I might be willing to try it with a small class - say, no more than 15 people - in an easily-mic'able room configuration, if I had the option of saying later in the semester: "hey, this isn't working. Can I get a live terp?" Still, most of my classes are at least 30 people. (Also: if I was doing this, I'd consider a text chat function a major bonus - some way to feed an interpreter new vocabulary being written on the board.)

Not really what you asked for, I know, but since not many others have answered ... *shrug*

ClearSky

I know this is off-topic too, but I had a CART person a few times that she only used a device that she would hold to her mouth, and she would talk into it. This would go from speech-to-text. I think it was okay because I think it made more mistakes than when using a transcribing machine.

I have read about a computer software that will text everything the instructor is saying, but the software needs to follow a few steps to have the instructor talk to get the software recognize his voice. I think the instructor have to use a microphone.

jillio

The speech to text software is promising, but it still has a few bugs to work out.

Re: terping by remote video feed: I guess it is better than no terp at all, but I just don't think it can replace having a terp in the classroom.

Reba

to all for your responses.

You have mostly confirmed what I thought but I wanted to get more viewpoints, especially from the students.

I'm making a proposal to a college this week, and your feedback was most helpful.

Reba

for the CART information. I'm not focusing on CART at the moment but it is something that I've been thinking about as a future possibility for inclusion at the college. I'm very glad to get your feedback on using CART in the classroom.

The Highlander

Well. Most interpreters complained about drive around too much and gas is not cheap anymore.

Video terps is good idea for emission.


I believe live terps is better than video terps for group of student, lab,etc.

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jasin

I've heard of interpreters driving 100 miles just to interpret for a deaf student. If its required it has to be done. There are laws concerning this they cannot just leave a deaf student high and dry.