Intelligent voice interfaces for apps have become ubiquitous. From making calls to purchases, the use cases are explosive. Its use in educational institutions as a learning aid is yet to reach its full potential, but we are certain it is on the right track and can revolutionize the way students are educated. Given the hybrid learning trend, remote learning intertwined with the physical classroom, the challenge is to keep the student engaged and learning, regardless of the environment they are in.
To achieve critical education outcomes, it is important to focus on both technology and 21st century skills. Voice-based learning is an aid that includes a broad range of tools and enables a blended learning model- augmenting the learner’s experience and help educators with their teaching methodologies.
Voice tech applications are getting smarter over time with advances in artificial intelligence and their application in voice technology. Instructors can simply ask their app “How many students submitted their homework assignment?”, “Who was absent in class today?”, “What are the instructions for today’s science fair?”, “ Summarize the progress of student Andy Jacobs” etc. Voice interfaces enable applications to give the right answer, faster.
Let us look at what makes voice technology a terrific aid in classrooms:
- Collecting data in real-time:
Voice enabled devices are great at collecting data in real-time. Using them, teachers can record students’ engagement in class, monitor participation, attendance, etc. This is a productivity tool for teachers as they can just speak to the app instead of tedious touch and type. Moreover, built in artificial intelligence and analytics capabilities empower the instructor with data analysis and real-time insights. This empowers the instructor to quickly tackle situations that need a bias for action.
- Academic tracking and feedback:
The academic progress of students can be tracked over a period of time using voice interfaces. It can be done at scale for every student in the institution. It can also remind students about what is expected of them regarding assignments, deadlines, subjects they have enrolled in, etc. The institution can also use voice interfaces to deliver personalized feedback and constant updates on what is happening in the classrooms. Timely feedback on student performance is an important mechanism for management of academic outcomes- voice tech can definitely be used to accomplish this.
- Communal learning:
When using voice interfaces, everyone in the classroom hears the same information uniformly without any bias. The students can maintain eye contact without looking down at the computer screen. The teachers also don’t have to break eye contact with the students, thereby helping build a closer rapport with the students.
- Accessing records:
Accessing student record details quickly is often difficult, even if you use a student information system. Voice interfaces make this an easy process as they are adept at large data sets. For example, if a teacher wants targeted information about a student, all they need to do is ask the app. It will share the information as soon as the question is asked. It is not just limited to academic records as educational institutions can get their entire data that was input into the system.
- Personalizing learning:
Thanks to the human-like features of a voice interface, it makes learning more personal and humane for the students. Students will find it easy to follow instructions from voice interfaces because of their ability to express a wide range of emotions and voice modulations. Also, personalization means accommodating different learning styles of a student body and making some adjustments to fit their unique needs.
- Introducing routine learning exercises:
Institutions can use voice assistants to introduce routine learning exercises such as learning words, memorizing spellings and facts, learning common phrases from foreign languages, etc. The use of voice as an aid for this is definitely a time saver for the teacher. Such methods can also positively drive engagement of students, as the voice can be blended with music to make it more appealing.
- Customizing tests:
Voice technology can be customized according to the needs of the student. It can come with a bunch of ready-made templates that the teacher can choose from, on a whim. Moreover, a teacher can use different templates to match the diverse student personas in a classroom.
- Storytelling:
We all love stories. Voice interfaces can be used to read stories to students. It could be specific to the subjects that are being taught or for the pure joy of listening to a story. It keeps the students engaged, but it also gives an opportunity for the teachers to rest. Interactive stories with engaging plot lines as a mode of instruction can help the student perform much better in classrooms.
- Controlling the environment:
Teachers can use voice interfaces to control the classroom by setting the tone with instructions. These can be repeated and also modified rapidly to inform students in the classroom on protocols for learning sessions, tests, and any special announcements.
In summary, Voice interfaces can be used to deliver an immersive learning experience and make learning more attractive to both student and instructor. They are a useful aid to the institution to deliver the right education at the right time to the right student.
The team at Alan AI will be more than happy to assist you with any questions or provide a personalized demo of our intelligent voice interface platform. Just email us at sales@alan.app
About Alan AI:
Alan’s voice interface leverages the user context and existing UI of applications, a key to understanding responses for next-gen human voice conversations. Alan AI has patent protections for its unique contextual Spoken Language Understanding (SLU) technology to accurately recognize and understand human voice, within a given context. Alan’s SLU transcoder leverages the context to convert voice directly to meaning by using raw input from speech recognition services, imparting the accuracy required for mission-critical enterprise deployments and enabling human-like conversations, rather than robotic ones. Voice based interactions, coupled with the ability to allow users to verify the entered details without having the system to reiterate inputs, provides an unmatched end-user experience.
