# Training for Realtime Writers

# FY 2013 Project Abstracts

U.S. Department of Education

Office of Postsecondary Education

# P116K130006

**Cuyahoga Community College**

Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C’s) Realtime Writing Mentoring Project is focused on the Greater Cleveland area, primarily the City of Cleveland and the surrounding inner-ring suburbs.

The two goals of Tri-C’s Realtime Writing Mentoring Project are:  (1) to increase the number of students from minority backgrounds and males exposed to and engaged in realtime writing training and; (2) to encourage student persistence by providing mentoring and experiential learning for realtime writing students early in their training.  Tri-C’s Cleveland Mentoring Project will address the projected increased need for Realtime writers and address the project’s goals through the following objectives:  (1) Establish a CCR (captioning and court reporting) education and career pathway for high school students including an outreach and recruitment strategy to increase awareness of Realtime Writing as a career option to individuals located within the City of Cleveland, and ensure ongoing growth in program enrollment;  (2) Providing specially tailored instruction to students located within the City of Cleveland, which will include a high percentage of African-American, Hispanic, and male individuals; (3) Create a formalized job shadowing/mentoring and student support program for these students to support student success; (4) Promote job placement by creating an approved Certificate program recognizing competency at the level required within the industry for National Court Reporters Association’s (NCRA) Registered Professional Reporter (RPR) certification; and (5)The CCR program will hire a project coordinator to structure and implement the functions of outreach, coordination of resources to the students, forging job shadowing and mentorship partnerships with court reporting firms in the greater Cleveland vicinity, and assisting graduates with job placement.

The project will address two competitive preference priorities:  Competitive Preference Priority 1—Improving Productivity; and Competitive Preference Priority 3— Technology.

P116K130001

**Huntington Junior College**

The “Initiative to Recruit and Train Students in Realtime Writing Programs Offered at Huntington Junior College” is a two-year program that focuses on training and placement for individuals who can meet the requirements for closed captioning of video programming set forth in section 713 of the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 613).  The $300,000 program will establish best practices in providing realtime writing programs through distance education.

The project consists of five goals that have direct impact on student training and placement:  (1) High School Recruitment Program - $66,000, GOAL:  Provide first year of realtime reporting education to 20 high school students to improve time to graduation and total cost for student; (2) Adult Recruitment Program - $37,000, GOAL:  Increase student enrollment in Huntington Junior College’s (HJC’s) realtime reporting program by 50 percent; (3) Retraining Program - $32,000, Goal:  Retrain 80 existing reporters to become realtime writers; (4) Curriculum Enhancements Focused on Improving Productivity & Data Driven Personalization - $30,000, GOAL:  Improve retention rates for realtime reporting students from 30 percent to 40 percent; (5) Scholarships $120,000, GOAL:  Provide $120,000 in scholarships to increase the number of students enrolling and graduating in realtime reporting program.  Formal project evaluation ($15,000) with an approved project evaluator will occur every term to ensure that the grant is having a direct impact on student success.  This program will benefit residents of the United States as HJC can offer this program throughout the United States through the distance education technology it has already established.

P116K130003

**Community College of Allegheny County**

The Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, provides training for rewarding careers in court reporting and seeks to address the growing need for realtime captioning to serve the unmet requirements of the deaf and hard-of-hearing.  CCAC proposes to accomplish this goal by requesting $297,560. This grant will establish a marketing and recruitment campaign to increase enrollment, provide scholarships, implement and deliver training and retraining curriculum for realtime captioning on campus and online and to develop a Spanish captioning program.

Each goal has well-established objectives throughout the three-year grant request.  Funding objectives include:

· Retrain working reporters through partnerships with the Pennsylvania Court Reporters Association and Pittsburgh’s VITAC, the world’s largest captioning company.

· Offer captioning training to existing students and recruit new students.

· Increase scholarship funding.

· Offer mentoring opportunities to all students.

· Implement a realtime captioning curriculum through partnering with Stenograph, Inc.

· Upgrade equipment in the existing DiLorenzo-Weber Broadcast Captioning Studio.

· Deliver online training.

· Develop a Spanish captioning component through the use of a consultant.

The grant addresses each of the three Competitive Preference Priorities as follows:

Competitive Preference Priority 1 - Improving Productivity:  Individuals will receive realtime writing training in CCAC’s Broadcast Captioning Studio, with online captioning courses developed by Stenograph, Inc.  These results will improve the instructor’s ability and productivity to create educational tools to enhance student learning and thereby increase productive output through utilizing StenographU, which provides instantaneous feedback for each individual user.

Competitive Preference Priority 2 - Enabling More Data-Based Decision-Making:  StenographU captioning courses provide extensive electronic data and progress reports to assess student achievement, monitor areas for improvement and develop online drills in individual-specific material. Utilizing an external consultant and innovative features, individual goals and outcomes will regularly be evaluated strategically on a short-term, mid-term and long-term basis.

Competitive Preference Priority 3 - Technology:  CCAC is an early adaptor of mobile technology through iPads for classroom use, Steno Flashcards, iStenoPad, iFlashcards apps, and iAttendance, a statistical analysis that has been matched with student success.

P116K130005

**Stenograph LLC**

Prince Institute is seeking a grant to provide current realtime reporters who work as court reporters the opportunity to participate in accelerated retraining courses that would provide the skills and knowledge necessary to function as broadcast captioners meeting the needs of Section 713 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. This retraining effort would provide instruction and placement of individuals who completed a court reporting training program as realtime writers in order to meet closed captioning of video programming set forth in The Act.

The proposed project would provide professional realtime reporters with the opportunity to participate in accelerated, short-term retraining called “boot camp” which will provide the necessary skills broadcast captioners need in a single program.  Outreach to get training to the grassroots with both face-to-face and online components is the focus of this project.  A day-long face-to-face session followed by additional synchronous training via distance learning will provide the greatest opportunity for increasing the number of qualified captioners.  Face-to-face sessions will be offered at regional and state association meetings which are aimed at reaching the greatest number of professionals.  The grant will be used for the fulfillment of these goals:  recruitment/marketing, retraining, scholarships and mentoring.

Competitive Preference Priority 1:  Productivity is increased by offering the boot camp project in an accelerated format with two modules offered online. This efficient setup allows current realtime professionals the ability to advance their skills while remaining employed.

Competitive Preference Priority 2:  The pairing of the participant to a professional mentor early in the program process will help to ensure persistence throughout the program.  Participant enrollment will be managed electronically.  The collection and maintenance of enrollment information in an electronic format will provide data useful to target new populations of participants in years 2 and 3.  Evaluation will occur at 6 month intervals to include focus groups, surveys and assessment of participant progress. Participants and mentors will be required to complete evaluations.

Competitive Preference Priority 3:  Teacher effectiveness will be improved through the use of Prince Institute’s Desire2Learn (D2L) learning management system in conjunction with the Blackboard Collaborate online collaboration platform.  D2L will be used to host the project’s distance learning activity.  Registered participants will be enrolled in the course and provided with the opportunity to access content, participate in discussion boards, review practice material, connect with NBC Learn, a comprehensive database of news, weather and sports programming.  Mentoring relationships will be managed using an online platform for managing mentor-mentee relationships.

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3/28/2014