4 Ways for Students to Prep for an Online School Year

With the upcoming semester approaching faster than it may seem, it might be daunting to think about having to complete all of your learning online for the foreseeable future. Let's face it, the transition isn't going to be the easiest one.

4 Ways for Students to Prep for an Online School Year

With the upcoming semester approaching faster than it may seem, it might be daunting to think about having to complete all of your learning online for the foreseeable future. Let's face it, the transition isn't going to be the easiest one.

That's why we have compiled these four ways you can get ahead of the curve and walk into the classroom (Okay, so your bedroom. Maybe the living room.) ready to handle whatever comes your way.

Here are five ways that machine transcribed audio can turn your unprecedented online learning experience into your best semester yet:

Let Your Notes Write Themselves

When using automatic transcription software, you can quickly turn your lectures into notes. Switching between an online lecture and wherever you were previously taking your notes can be chaotic, disruptive, and a huge hassle when you're working from a small space (and a small screen!). Recording your lectures and transcribing them at a later time with machine transcribed audio takes the work out of it while you're in the lecture and after class is over.

With a few clicks, your lectures can be turned into notes and all you need to do is sit back and watch. This can allow you more focus while you're "in" class and can even save you time after.

Create a Digitized Learning Database

Once you have saved all the time it takes to type out your notes from class, you also get to save yourself countless hours in the future by creating searchable documents based on what you are learning. Imagine using the command+f (or ctrl+f for Windows users!)  function to search for a phrase instead of digging through hundreds of pages of paper?

Automatic transcription takes the hassle out of digitizing your documents and easily transitions them into text that you can store on your computer.

Share the workload

When note-taking is this easy and easily accessible on your computer, you can team up with other students or friends in the same courses and save yourself a ton of work compiling them in the first place. Sharing the burden of note-taking during class with even one person immediately cuts your work in half, and if both of you are using automated transcription software, the burden instantly becomes much more bearable.

On a more philanthropic note, having all your class notes in an easily accessible and shareable folder can also make you a hero. If you've ever been the person who procrastinated and only started cramming at the last second, you know how much you owe to the person who shares their carefully organized study sheets with you right before the exam.

Save time to focus on what really matters

We all know that schoolwork is half of what actually happens during the semester. You still have to spend time on your basic needs, like... oh, I dunno... keeping yourself alive.

With grocery shopping and meal planning taking more time than ever, your focus may be more divided now than it ever was. But by using machine-transcribed audio in the ways we have mentioned above, you save the time you now need to put into the extra-long grocery run. Time is a precious resource, even more so now than it has ever been, so let us give some back to you when you need it the most.

Heading back to school may not be the first thing on your mind right now. It's somehow lightyears away and barreling toward us all at the same time. However, you're going to be back in the classroom before you know it, and that classroom isn't going to look anything like what you're used to. For most of us, it may end up looking like a choice between the couch or your bed.

But with the help of automatic transcription, our aim is to make answering that question the hardest thing about your school days.