NET4VOICE - NEW TECHNOLOGIES FOR VOICE-CONVERTING IN BARRIER-FREE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS: DEVELOPMENT OF INNOVATIVE LEARNING METHODOLOGIES, EXPERIMENT AND RESULTS

This contribution is aimed to presents the general aims and structure of the‘Net4Voice’ European project, involving three Universities (Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna, Italy; University of Southampton, Great Britain; Universität Ulm, Germany) and two high schools (Istituto Professionale di Stato per i Servizi Sociali "Iris Versari", Italy; Totton College, Great Britain). The final aim of this project is to increase the quality of learning opportunities promoting the adoption of barrier-free learning environments and the development of innovative learning methodologies which utilise speech recognition technologies. Speech-recognition technology can automatically transform a lecturer’s speech into digital text in real-time, by generating an electronic transcription of the lesson, or conference material, to be printed or delivered through different devices and channels. Students with different kinds of auditory or motor disabilities can particularly benefit from the use of speech recognition technologies which can give access to synchronized speech-recognised text, allowing disabled students to follow lessons in an accessible learning environment without additional intermediary support and without losing lesson content. Also, second language learners, and all students in general, can take advantage of these technologies which enable them to exploit the available multimedia transcriptions a second time, after the lesson, by reading and listening to the lesson content again. This happens because, after the lesson, the software saves the speech recognition generated transcript, audio, and PowerPoint slides as streaming media file. This allows students to select lecture information that suits their individual learning preferences In particular, Net4Voice aims at defining a clear scheme to assess the impact of speech recognition technologies in education, by experimenting it in at least three different learning contexts: university, school and adult education classrooms. Secondly it evaluates the impact on key actors involved, such as students and teachers, by particularly focusing on learning settings addressed to people with particular needs. Net4Voice recognises that education in traditional classrooms is still the most pervasive way to support learning. Nevertheless, there are needs related to accessibility and effectiveness of learning that are not properly satisfied in the traditional classroom. The experimentation is aimed to evaluate: software accuracy in speech recognition in relation to the environment and the trial duration, student’s viewpoint, usability of aside products like transcription of the speech, open points. At the same time, describing and comparing the six different learning situations, the teachers and the lecturers involved are stimulated to develop a learning methodology such as a guideline supported by Pedagogical assumption. This Learning Methodology should offer a pedagogical support system in order to use technology at its best, exploiting all its potential, adapting it to students’ conditions and needs and combining software with personal teaching experience and methods Information and Communication Technology can be an effective means to raise the quality of educational processes in term of accessibility and effectiveness. The adoption of a universally accessible learning methodology will help to promote a better quality of education for the whole community.