Totton College Involved in International Research

Totton College has been invited to participate in an international research project as a partner of the University of Southampton, the University of Bologna (Italy), the University of Ulm (Germany), and two schools in Italy and Germany.  The opportunity has come through the Computing and ICT department’s close ties with the School of Electronics and Computer Science at Southampton University.

The EU-funded project, ‘Net4Voice’, will focus on the use of speech recognition technologies to support teaching and learning. Many students can benefit from having access to real-time text transcripts within their lessons, and audio or text transcripts after lessons, accessible through a variety of channels, including the college network and the internet.

Teachers are being encouraged to get involved in leading edge research aimed at reducing barriers to learning, improving the learning experience for students, and assessing the impact of innovative technologies such as speech recognition. Lessons will be recorded and students should benefit from being able to replay them, synchronised to presentations made by their teachers.

The project is scheduled to run through to December 2009.  The college hopes to try out the technology with a range of students on courses at different levels, and in a variety of learning situations. 

Chris Howard said “It’s an exciting project for the College to be involved in. We’re always looking for new ways to help students in their learning, and this research should give them access to additional multimedia resources, as well as helping those with particular needs”.