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Toward Emotionally Accessible Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).
Garron Hillaire1, Francisco Iniesto1, Bart Rienties1
1The Open University.
Studies in Health Technology and Informatics
|September 7, 2017
Summary
This study evaluated the emotional delivery of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) using affective computing and human raters. Findings reveal significant variations in emotional expression across synthetic voices for MOOC content.
Area of Science:
- Affective Computing
- Natural Language Processing
- Educational Technology
Background:
- Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are increasingly prevalent in digital education.
- Assessing the emotional tone of educational content is crucial for learner engagement.
- Synthetic voices in e-learning may impact the emotional perception of course material.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the emotional content of MOOCs using affective computing and human judgment.
- To investigate the impact of different text-to-speech (TTS) voices on emotional delivery.
- To establish the potential variation in emotional expression within synthetic MOOC narration.
Main Methods:
- Prosody detection analysis applied to audio from three MOOCs.
- Utilized two distinct text-to-speech (TTS) voices for emotional content generation.
- Human raters assessed the emotional content of the original course text.
Main Results:
- Significant differences in prosodic features were observed between the two TTS voices.
- Human raters identified varying emotional nuances in the synthetic speech.
- The study highlights the potential for synthetic voice to alter the perceived emotion of MOOCs.
Conclusions:
- Synthetic voice technology presents a variable factor in the emotional delivery of MOOCs.
- Affective computing and human evaluation provide complementary methods for assessing emotional content.
- Further research is needed to optimize synthetic voices for emotionally resonant e-learning experiences.
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