The Academic Audio website is currently under-development.
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Attending university is a fun, but expensive experience. For some, higher education can be even more challenging. After a spending a year looking at the steps taken by one university to improve equality, diversity and inclusion in teaching and learning, Amy developed the idea that has now become Academic Audio.
Having identified three key groups of students who often suffer educational inequalities at university, we began to tailor our idea to meet the needs of disabled students, students from low-income backgrounds, and students with English as an additional language. At Academic Audio we believe that everyone should have the opportunity to thrive in higher education. Our service provides students with the opportunity to read aloud academic texts that are set as reading on their university course, in exchange for payment. Following quality check procedures, this recording will be uploaded to our website, where other students can access this recording and read along at home. Universities would subscribe to this service, thereby giving their students the opportunity to narrate, listen, and easily access their course readings .
At the moment the existing resources provided to students by universities are largely limited to screen readers. However, literature shows that the use of natural voices as opposed to synthetic voice gives rise to increased intelligibility and comprehension, due to the rich prosodic cues in natural speech that simply cannot be replicated in synthetic speech. For students with reading disabilities, natural speech is even more important, as the prosodic cues act as a facilitator to improve understanding. And when it comes to reading academic texts, intonations, pronunciation and appropriate timing of pauses all play a vital role in facilitating learning, and only occur in natural speech.
A narrator records themselves reading aloud academic texts and uploads them to Academic Audio. A narrator is paid based on the number of words they record. Narrators are able to earn money literally whilst they are studying.
A student listener has access to all the recordings on Academic Audio at anytime, anywhere. The listener is able to pause, play and make notes during the audio recordings. A listener can sign in to Academic Audio using their University account.
By joining Academic Audio, Universities are improving academic accessibility for their students and providing them with employment in line with their studies. Universities are able to upload academic texts and suggested reading lists for students to narrate.
Amy is currently a student at the University of Nottingham, studying a school-based teacher training course. She has previously worked as a teaching assistant in schools across Nottingham City, and as a student researcher looking at improving the equality, diversity and inclusion in teaching and learning.
Harriet is in the fourth and final year of her Speech and Language Therapy course at the University of Newcastle. She is particularly interested in supporting people who have difficulty communicating following stroke, head injury or head and neck cancer.
Joe is at the University of Nottingham studying for a PhD in Geospatial Engineering. He is the current chairperson for the Younger Members Group at the Royal Institute of Navigation and has previously worked with the Commonwealth Association of Architects on capacity building in Commonwealth countries.
