Teacher Update: Upcoming Product Features — Class Captions & Transcripts

As part of our commitment to fostering an inclusive, accessible, and empowering learning experience for all, we’re always looking for ways to make the Skillshare experience better — and today, we’re excited to share a first-look update on a few product features you’ll see in the coming months.

This post previews updates on class captions and transcripts, and shares where to find more detail as features roll out. As always, we value your feedback, and love hearing from you at teach@skillshare.com.

Introducing Class Video Captions

We’re excited to share that over the coming week, captions will become a broader sitewide feature across all Skillshare classes. While captions have already been available for Skillshare Originals and Staff Picks, we’re excited to expand this capability even further and make them an integrated part of the Skillshare experience.

All classes currently on Skillshare will have captions by next week. Going forward, new classes published to Skillshare will automatically receive captions within several days of being published.

Students will be able to turn captions on and off by selecting “Captions” in the bottom right corner of the class video player. (Note: Students will receive messaging about captions functionality later this summer.)

Class captions have been a commonly requested feature by teachers and students alike. While captions will be in English in this first iteration, we look forward to supporting additional languages in the future. For more detail, feel free to head here for common FAQs. And, if you have any edits to captions added to your class, simply email us at teach@skillshare.com.

Introducing Transcripts 

Over the next 6 weeks, Skillshare will also begin a public beta test for class transcripts, which will display a written version of your class narration in a user-friendly way on your class page. 

While transcripts are helpful in enhancing accessibility in the student learning experience, they also have two particularly unique advantages for teachers:

• Transcripts have the potential to make your class easier to discover. Because transcripts can be “crawled” by search engines on Skillshare and on the broader Internet, they offer a new form of organic marketing and SEO, driving high-intent students to your classes.
• Transcripts also have the potential to increase your class engagement. Research suggests that students are likely to engage at a higher rate when given written material to accompany their visual learning.

Transcripts will be rolled out to all Skillshare classes in the coming weeks. The test will be structured in phases (meaning some classes may receive transcripts before others), and we’ll be closely monitoring how transcripts enrich the learning experience, class engagement, and SEO discoverability.

For more information, head here for detailed FAQs.

As with captions, students will receive messaging about transcript functionality later this summer.

Have Questions or Feedback?

We’re always working to improve the Skillshare experience for all teachers and students, and we value your feedback. Please email us anytime with questions, feedback, and ideas at teach@skillshare.com. We’re grateful to create this amazing community together with you!

Image Credits: Top image showing captions features Skillshare Teacher Vashti Harrison. Lower image showing transcripts features Skillshare Teacher Hedof (Rick Berkelmans).