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Wordly Case Study
The University of Southern California (USC) welcomes a diverse student body, with international students from over 130 countries, comprising more than 25% of its population. USC’s orientation program aims to foster connections between students and their families through inclusive experiences, aligning with the university’s core values of integrity, excellence, diversity, equity, inclusion, well-being, open communication, and accountability.
However, USC faced a significant challenge: the limitation of accommodations for students needing transcribing or translation during live events hindered their mission to create an equitable student experience. These in-person translation services are very costly and only meet the needs of students who make a request many days prior to the event.
They also received multiple requests for translators to accompany a guest when they were separated from their students during the events. They did not have the staffing, budget, or ability to meet all the needs during live presentations, meaning non-English-speaking families could not fully engage in the orientation process.
They wanted the ability to promote a translation service in their marketing materials that would be available without requiring a student or guest to request the service in advance to enhance the overall experience and make all in-person events more accessible.
Ensuring guests could participate along with their students is important for the USC team, as having an engaged support network eased the transition into the university. However, USC had no reliable data on how often or in what languages translation services were desired, which made it hard to plan.
They wanted a solution that would facilitate live translation in multiple languages, allowing attendees to access captions or audio in their preferred language. Additionally, they sought a system that would seamlessly integrate with their existing event management platform, Cvent, and support virtual and in-person events.
USC selected Wordly’s live AI translation and captioning solution to help support its orientation programs. The platform eliminates the need for human interpreters or specialized equipment, offering a straightforward and cost-effective way to provide real-time translation across multiple languages.
Attendees can easily select their preferred language using their smartphones or computers, accessing either audio or captions in real time. Wordly’s all-inclusive pricing model was particularly appealing, allowing USC to offer a wide range of languages without the uncertainty or additional costs.
USC used Wordly to support in-person orientations, particularly the sessions targeted to family members, as well as many live webinars hosted through Cvent’s Attendee Hub and Studio Advanced tools.
“Using Wordly allows us to align our programs with USC’s unifying values of diversity, equity, and inclusion. We can confidently tell attendees that AI-powered captioning and translation services will be available.” – Christine D’Arcy, Business Analyst & Cvent Administrator
To date, USC has offered over 50 hours of AI captioning and translation through Wordly, used by over 700 attendees. This includes two live-streamed orientation webinars in November 2023, one in-person orientation in January 2024, and nine in-person orientations between June and August 2024.
Languages used by USC attendees include Korean, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Cantonese, Hindi, Persian, Tagalog, Japanese, French, German, Greek, Gujarati, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, and Thai.
After seeing a demo of Wordly at Cvent Connect in 2023, USC was impressed by Wordly’s ease of use. Key benefits that led to USC selecting Wordly include:
“Wordly is a very impressive product. Any time we show the AV staff at our event venue how it works, the first reaction is always, “Wow, that is so cool!”” – Christine D’Arcy, Business Analyst & Cvent Administrator
“The team at Wordly is really great to work with and very responsive. They set up a custom glossary for use, which was an amazing level of support I was not expecting.” – Christine D’Arcy, Business Analyst & Cvent Administrator
University of Southern California (USC) is a private institution that was founded in 1880 and has over 49,000 students. Based in Los Angeles, the university attracts a diverse range of students, including over 13,000 international students from countries all over the world.
The Office of Orientation programs manages all programs for new students, both graduate and undergraduate, as well as supporting family members during their student’s transition to the university. USC’s orientation program is a fully hybrid experience, including virtual and in-person components.
Christine D’Arcy manages the Office of Orientation Program’s event technology stack, which supports a hybrid onboarding experience for over 10,000 students and family members. Christine is also responsible for identifying opportunities to improve and streamline event processes, operations, and attendee experiences.
Wordly is the pioneer and leader in live interpretation, providing a high-quality, secure, easy-to-use, and affordable live AI translation and caption solution for communicating across multiple languages. Wordly translates dozens of languages in real time, making in-person and virtual meetings and events more inclusive, accessible, and engaging.
Its SaaS platform meets enterprise-grade security and privacy standards and eliminates the need for human interpreters or special equipment. Millions of users across thousands of organizations rely on Wordly to make their events and meetings accessible to everyone.
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Learn how the University of Southern California (USC) transformed orientation events for students and families from 130+ countries using Wordly. See how USC made every session more inclusive, accessible, and engaging, while saving time, cost, and complexity. Download the full case study to explore their results.
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