The recent years have seen the rise and advancement of Artificial Intelligence. And voice technologies, including Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods, haven’t been left behind. Not many classrooms have embraced such emerging trends. Smart speakers haven’t taken center stage yet, but they are good at improving student learning. Smart speakers are one way to implement voice technology within the classroom setting. Many others haven’t been explored yet and fall under voice technology in education.
Many platforms are implementing voice technologies, including https://domyhomework123.com/solve-my. The AI-powered voice assistants help students and teachers enhance classroom engagement while ensuring seamless workflows. There has been rapid evolution and much research regarding AI, data science, and robotics to ensure that speech recognition is a reality. AI uses big data for processing and development activities.
The different use cases of voice technology in education
Schools need to concentrate more in several use cases within speech technology. Here are some of the use cases:
Reading practice
Let us be clear here about artificial intelligence and speech recognition. These elements have existed for several years, dating back to the 1950s. There have been several trials in coming up with voice-enabled literacy programs aimed at the kids, but such efforts have always failed. However, recent technological developments are seeing the emergence of new tools targeting children’s needs and speech patterns, giving some real-time feedback. From such software innovations, there are unique prompts, listening, correcting, and encouraging students to read loudly. Such a case encourages independent reading.
Fluency and literacy evaluations
There is the growth of reading assessments that are voice-enabled. Most education institutions are exploring the voice tech in this area to ensure that they can:
- Assess the fluency of every student
- Ensure the major reading skills get a way of noting down and tracking the progress.
- Come up with unique chances or opportunities to foster intervention and ensure people embrace further learning.
While listening to the student reading, the software comes up with real-time insights focusing on the following:
- Any deletions noted
- The insertions that happened
- If there are any substitutions
- Noting down the repetitions
- Assess the words corrected for every given minute.
Having these data points that keep growing every now and then (on a granular basis) ensures accuracy of a high degree is reduced to a phoneme level. There is an elimination of any assessment bias. Teachers are in a position of fine-tuning to a more precise way.
Science and math instruction
STEM disciplines like science and math have embraced voice technology. Speech recognition technology can be applied within a classroom environment, remotely, or independently. You can use the technology to implement multiple-choice questions, math games, or oral revision and assessments. The student is prompted to speak out the answer and gets a congratulatory note once they provide correct answers, and the system encourages them to give the problem another try in case of wrong answers.
Language learning
Language learning is a new feature that has come in handy to harness the benefits of advanced technology. Voice technology spices this by helping students take a second language and enhance their skills.
From such a consideration, speech recognition software surfaces to listen as students learn and accomplish speaking assignments. The software will go ahead to rate and provide scores in terms of pronunciation and fluency. This happens in real-time, and the scores are displayed on the screen, which is a motivational factor in ensuring students continue engaging. The software provides them with amazing feedback and a good tool to trigger their inner self into building confidence and adopting positive reinforcement skills.
Interactive learning
This has been the most dynamic change in technology regarding education. Several voice-enabled applications and programs have been developed. They are versatile, immersive and target personal experiences to seamlessly integrate with how students survive with their daily activities.
Students can use them during the morning classroom activities. The apps then come into play for remote learning while the students are at home in the afternoon, ensuring they actively participate, stay motivated, and enjoy control over their learning process. With such continuous and disciplined learning, there is an amazing student-teacher relationship, and student performance outcomes are great.
Personal Assistant for Teachers
Teachers use voice technologies to implement several teaching tasks and make such technologies their personal assistants. The technologies come in handy to issue instructions to students, set reminders, and respond to general questions. This also helps teachers to have some time for management activities. Voice technologies can also issue important announcements, saving the teacher the time to walk into the classroom in person.
Online Oral/Viva Tests
Voice technologies are good for administering oral or viva exams through the online classroom. A student can speak while the software uses speech-to-text capabilities to record the student’s responses during the viva test.
Revisions
Lecturers and teachers can develop unique ways of recording their classes and sharing them with students as a source of revision when needed. Such recordings are uploaded to the school or classroom portal, and students can access them to use as resources when preparing for exams. The materials are available 24/7 at the student’s convenience.
Other Use Cases for Voice Technology
AI-enabled voice assistants exist in different areas, from personal to business applications. Such software includes Google’s Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa, Window’s Cortana, and Apple’s Siri. You can use them to harmonize your calendar, create appointments, control other devices or applications, and more. Core Intelligence has come up as business applications with more complex voice-enabled capabilities to assist accounts and answer business-related queries.
Warnings for voice technologies
There are risks to be considered when using speech recognition software in education.
- Most voice technologies were created targeting adults and may have challenges when it comes to understanding children. Speech patterns in kids keep changing and cannot be the same as adult’s pitch.
- There are some biases regarding software use, especially in cases where we have different races, ages, dialects, ethnicities, and accents. Such bias demoralizes some students once the system tells them they wrongly read something when it wasn’t the case.
- Voice technology should not be a way of replacing the teacher.
Conclusion
Voice technology is transforming the education sector. Though it has amazing advantages, it should be integrated carefully. Data privacy should be given high priority, and there should be no bias using voice-enabled software.