Although it was more than 60 years ago that the speech recognition (also known as "Automatic Speech Recognition" or "ASR") was born, not until recent years has this technology been booming and its application can be seen in almost every industry and the application in education is one worth mentioning.
Both Apple and Microsoft have integrated speech recognition technology into their operating systems (as is shown below) and users can use their voice to control the computer and applications[1], that is, they can speak certain phrases, or “spoken commands,” to make the computer take different actions, such as opening documents or switching applications[2]. Therefore, this build-in technology can be applied to teachers, students or staff in an educational institution.
Mac OS X
Windows
Apart from these two OS providers, such companies as Nuance (www.nuance.com) in the USA and iflytek (www.iflytek.com) in China have also offered speech recognition solutions for education. Their target customers can be categorized into two parts: the educational institution itself (including teachers and staff) and students.
For educational institutions, one important yet tedious task is conducting oral tests because there are a large amount of examinees and traditionally the examiners have to follow a one-to-one approach or record test-takers’ words for further analysis, either of which is time-consuming, costly and may involve subjective judgment. Now evaluation systems based on speech recognition technology can automatically analyze test-takers’ words according to a combined standard including linguistics and statistics and output test reports. Iflytek’s Multilingual Intelligent Speech Evaluation System is one case in point where the system can automatically grade examinees while pinpointing the errors and flaws in the user's speech and give suggestions on improvement[3]. In this way, educational institutions can truly improve efficiency and objectivity and lower the examination cost.
Another thing educational institutions have to cope with is how to improve communication efficiency and fluency while maintaining or even reducing operating cost. Communication here has two dimensions: communication in between staff and with people outside and a large number of these communications are fulfilled by telephone call since it is a more direct way than other methods such as by email and fax. A question may be addressed here: since each staff or department has independent telephone number, how can one get in touch with them by telephone? A telephone directory, either online or in paper, might be a solution, but would it be better if we had telephone attendants specializing in connecting two parties over the phone? Yet new posts means new cost and a qualified attendant can be quite costly and cannot be at office 24h a day. Facing it, some institutions come up with the idea of “auto attendant” which can answer phones automatically, however this will sacrifice callers’ satisfaction because it forces callers to listen to menus, make touch-tone selections.[4] Nuance Employee Productivity Suite (EPS) is a much better choice here which is a voice-driven auto attendant and directory services solution that offers callers fast and efficient voice-command access to other people, places, and information resources from any telephone device at any time using simple, natural voice commands.[5]
For students, more and more are using computers to do homework, much of which involves text inputting and editing. However they may not know they can “type” text in a much more efficient and creative way - using speech recognition. Software like Nuance Dragon 12 can satisfy this need, which allows students to edit and format documents by voice.[6]
From above discussion, the overall benefit of using such technology is self-evident such as the improvement of efficiency, objectivity and satisfaction and the reduction of cost and time. However, there are still some issues that need to be considered. Investment might be the first problem people encounter when trying to apply these solutions in practice. What’s more, the accuracy of speech recognition is still one of the biggest concerns for customers, even though the accuracy are declared to be more than 99%, still customers will encounter errors while using it due to many factors such as background noise, accent and the quality of input device (microphone).
To sum up, though speech recognition technology is growing in educational field, operating system and software manufacturers still have a long way to go: They still need to suit diverse customers’ needs by developing software or applications that are more affordable and more accurate in “listening”, ”understanding” and “reaction”.
Works Cited:
[1][2]"Getting Started:Apple Technology for Diverse Learners." Apple Inc., n.d. Web.24 Oct. 2013. <http://www.apple.com/education/docs/L360989C-US_L360989C_DiverseLearners_ff_acc.pdf>.
[3]"Multilingual Intelligent Speech Evaluation System_Education Product_Anhui USTC IFLYTEK Co., Ltd." Multilingual Intelligent Speech Evaluation System_Education Product_Anhui USTC IFLYTEK Co., Ltd. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Oct. 2013. http://www.iflytek.com/en/content/details_10_1680.html.
[4][5]"Experience the Difference Speech Makes…Speech-Enabled Employee Directories." Nuance Communications, Inc., 2007. Web. 24 Oct. 2013. <http://www.nuance.com/ucmprod/groups/corporate/@web/documents/collateral/nd_004545.pdf>.
[6]"Dragon for Education." Dragon Education Solutions. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Oct. 2013. http://www.nuance.com/for-business/by-industry/education/dragon-education-solutions/index.htm.
Great article!
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