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Write On

  • 04-02-2012 11:22am
    #1
    magnumlady
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,659 ✭✭✭


    My son is doing a course on this website: http://www.writeon.ie/nala/student/index.jsp

    I'm just wondering what you think of it? I think the computer generated speaking is poor, if they are trying to help people that may have trouble with speech I think it should be better.
    The 'instructors' have Irish names but can't pronounce them.


Comments

  • #2
    SerialComplaint
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,644 ✭✭✭SerialComplaint


    It's a bit strange all right. You'd think that they would at least have gender-specific voices, so the male character would have a male voice. It reads 'Seán' as something like "See-inverted-exclamation-mark-n' which is guaranteed to confuse.

    I don't like the fact that they've gone for Flash-based training. A lot of mobile devices don't support Flash, so they are immediately limiting the audience. It also makes it hard for people to use their own Assistive Technology (such as screen reading software).

    It was probably a cost issue. To produce their own audio or video would have pushed the cost into a different league altogether. Do let NALA have your feedback. It might help them produce new versions.


  • #3
    tomomara
    Registered Users Posts: 7 ✭tomomara


    Hi magnumlady,

    I run NALA's Distance Learning Service and am responsible for writeon.ie. If you'd like to send an email to the address shown in the Help section of the site, we'd be happy to talk to you about your and your son's experience. I hope your son is enjoying his time on the site.

    The text to speech option was chosen for very specific reasons to do with cost and flexibility as SerialComplaint notes. We can 'teach' the software to pronounce words it cannot say once we have identified them. I know 'Seán' was pronounced 'shawn' at one point and we did have a male voice for the man and a female voice for Sinéad, but there may now be a bug on the site, which we will investigate.

    We are very interested in hearing back from users of the site. We keep all comments and then put it to a team of representative learners in usability testing. If the learners feel something is a problem, then we are delighted to work to fix this. In fact, the site has been continually modified since it was launched in September 2008. All changes are made in response to learner feedback.

    You will find a usability report on the site on nala.ie/publications which deals specifically with this issue, among others. The learners in that case felt the voice was 'fine' and did not interfere with learning. They knew it wasn't real and accepted it. Mind you, we had many 'non-learners' telling us it was an issue for them. A second usability report will be published very soon (once I've finished checking it!).

    I hope this helps and we look forward to hearing from you soon.

    Kind regards,
    Tom O' Mara
    NALA Distance Learning Co-ordinator


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