Key takeaways
- Ask before recording: your institution and lecturer may have their own rules, and the course may already provide a recording.
- Record from as close to the speaker as allowed; background noise and echoes distort speech for recognition.
- At the 100–125 words a minute Wikipedia cites for slide presentations, a one-hour lecture is roughly 6,000–7,500 words.
- A transcript is raw material: turn it into self-test questions and a list of terms; a 2013 review rated practice testing high utility and rereading low.
- Check technical terms, names and formulas against the audio and your slides.
A lecture moves at the lecturer's speed, and notes taken in the room always miss something. A recording catches everything, and a transcript makes that everything usable: searchable, skimmable and easy to turn into revision material. This guide covers recording a lecture properly, transcribing it, and what to do with the transcript afterwards, with an eye on what a major review of study techniques found.
Step 1: get permission
Before recording, check the rules. Your institution and your lecturer may each have a policy on recording, and your course may already provide an official recording. Recording without permission can breach those policies, and recording laws vary by place. Ask the lecturer or check the course information first, and use recordings only for your own study unless told otherwise.
Step 2: record from the right place
Wikipedia's article on speech recognition notes that speech is distorted by background noise, echoes and recording characteristics, and a large room can add all three: distance from the speaker, hard surfaces and fan noise. Google's Live Transcribe help gives the basic remedy for any recording: keep the microphone near the person speaking.
- Sit near the front, close to the lecturer or the room's speaker, away from the projector.
- Put the phone on something soft so desk knocks do not reach the microphone.
- Silence notifications and turn on aeroplane mode if it does not affect the recorder.
- Check after five minutes that the recording is actually running and audible.
How long the transcript will be
Wikipedia's article on words per minute cites 100 to 125 words a minute as a comfortable pace for slide presentations, and 150 to 160 for audiobooks.
A worked example. A one-hour lecture at 100 to 125 words a minute produces roughly 6,000 to 7,500 words, a lot to reread before every exam. That is why the transcript is the start of studying, not the end.
Step 3: transcribe and correct the key terms
Transcribe the recording, then correct the words that matter most, not every "um". Lectures can be full of technical terms, names and formulas, and Wikipedia notes that recognition error rates rise as the vocabulary grows larger. Check them against your slides, the reading list or the audio. A transcript where "mitosis" became "my toes is" is a transcript you cannot search.
Step 4: turn the transcript into study material
A 2013 review of ten study techniques by Dunlosky and colleagues rated practice testing and distributed practice as high utility, and rereading, summarisation and highlighting as low utility, though it notes summarisation helps some students on some tasks. So build the transcript into things you can test yourself with:
- Questions: turn key points into questions you can answer later without looking, and come back to them over several days.
- A term list: every new term with a one-line definition and where it came up.
- Short section summaries if they help you, in your own words, as a map rather than the main method.
- Gaps: anything still unclear becomes a question for the lecturer or tutor.
The listing for our transcription app describes this use: reviewing recorded explanations alongside lecture notes and picking out unfamiliar terms or points to ask about.
Line the transcript up with the slides
Lectures make most sense when words and visuals sit together. As you correct the transcript, add the slide number at each change, such as "[slide 14]", so every explanation points to its diagram or equation. Where the lecturer says "as you can see here" or "this one", note what "this" refers to while it is fresh; a transcript full of unexplained pointers is hard to revise from weeks later.
Use timestamps to jump back
Mark the transcript with times at each new topic, so a confusing section is one tap away in the recording; adding timestamps to a transcript explains how often and in what format. For study, a clean transcript without fillers is easier to read than a strictly verbatim one; verbatim versus clean verbatim explains the difference.
Live captions in the room
If following speech in real time is the difficulty, live captioning may help alongside recording. Google's Live Transcribe, available on Pixel phones and some other Android phones, shows speech as text as it happens; its help says it needs an internet connection unless you use one of its offline languages. If you need formal accessibility support, ask your institution what it offers.
Transcribing with Transcribe Audio to Text PRO
Transcribe Audio to Text PRO, one of our video and utility apps, converts recorded lectures into transcripts you can read at your own pace. Its listing is clear that accuracy depends on recording quality, background noise and speech clarity, so terms and numbers should be checked against the audio. Speech-to-text accuracy tips covers recording habits in more depth, and the app guide the full workflow.
Good to know
Frequently asked questions
Can I record my lectures?
How many words is a one-hour lecture?
How do you turn a lecture transcript into study notes?
Where should I sit to record a lecture?
Sources
- Words per minute (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia — accessed
- Speech recognition (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia — accessed
- Use Live Transcribe (opens in a new tab)Google Android Accessibility Help — accessed
- Improving Students' Learning With Effective Learning Techniques (Dunlosky et al., Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2013) (opens in a new tab)PubMed — accessed
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