Adding a Poodll Read Aloud Activity to the Courseware
Margarita Berezyanskaya
Last Update één maand geleden
The Poodll Read Aloud activity in the Avenue courseware allows teachers to select a reading passage, ask students to listen to a speaker read it, then repeat the speaker and record themselves while reading the passage out loud. The plugin automatically grades the learners’ reading for accuracy as well as speed and fluency (words per minute). For more reliability, it also supports manual grading by instructors. Learners can later see these scores, listen to the recording and review their errors.
Using the Poodll Read Aloud Activity to Enhance Blended and Online Learning
The Poodll Read Aloud module is a useful tool for blended and online learning as it allows the whole class to complete the oral reading task simultaneously, without the need for the instructor to work with learners individually or mark their oral reading attempts in real time. Learners can even complete the activity outside the class period, hence allowing the instructor to save face-to-face or online classroom time. The Read Aloud activity also makes it possible for teachers to assess the learners’ performance at a later time and override the program grades manually, if needed.
The Poodll Read Aloud module can be used for both skill-building classroom activities and skill-using reading and pronunciation tasks. Using this activity, teachers can create several opportunities for learners to practice their oral reading skills. Instructors can also use this activity as an assessment-task to gather samples of the students’ reading and save the learners’ grades in their gradebook.
Watch the video below for an introduction to the Poodll Read Aloud activity.
Step-by-Step Instructions for Adding a Poodll Read Aloud Activity
1. Go to the course main page.
2. Click on the Turn editing on button.
3. Click the Add an activity or resource link in the appropriate topic.
Note: The Add an activity or resource pop-up appears.
4. Click on the Activities tab.
5. Click on the Poodll Read Aloud icon.
Note: The Adding a new Poodll Read Aloud page appears.
6. Type in a descriptive name for the activity in the Poodll Read Aloud textbox.
7. Type a description in the Description textbox (optional).
8. It is best to leave the option Display description on course page unchecked to save screen space on the course menu.
9. Set a time limit for learners to read the passage from the Time Limit drop-down menu. You can choose No time limit for skill building and practice tasks.
10. Type in or copy a passage in the Reading Passage textbox.
11. Choose the Passage Language from the drop-down menu.
12. Choose the text-to-speech (TTS) voice from the TTS Voice drop-down menu. There are a variety of male and female voices with different languages and accents to choose from.
13. Choose the TTS Speed from the three options medium, slow or extra slow.
14. The Alternatives textbox allows instructors to correct possible mistakes made by the Read Aloud machine. These mistakes can be caused by the program incorrectly transcribing student audio files to a passage. For example, if the passage contains the word "their" the program might misinterpret a student’s attempt as "they're" and give a false negative mark to the pronunciation of this segment. To avoid this type of misinterpretation, the two words can be listed in the Alternatives textbox, separated by the character |. The first word on the line will be the word in the passage, and the next word(s), the acceptable transcription(s).
Note: Each word set should be on a separate line.
Note: The program does not accept multi-word phrases in this section.
15. The Pre-attempt instructions and Post-attempt instructions are provided in the textbox by default. You can change the wordings if you wish.
16. In the Target WPM textbox, set the desired speed, which is the number of words the learners should read per minute. The default is set to 100, but teachers can change this based on the students’ levels and the activity level. Note that learners should read the set number of words or more to receive the full mark.
17. Check the Can exit early box if you would like to allow students to finish the activity before the time is up.
18. Check the Enable Listen mode box if you would like to allow the students to access the reading and model audio before they start the activity.
19. Check the Enable Practice mode (Listen and Repeat) box if you would like to allow the students to practise reading the passage sentence by sentence.
20. Check the Enable Practice mode (Shadowing) box to allow learners to read the passage while the model audio is playing. Enabling this option can give learners an excellent opportunity to adjust their pronunciation, intonation and speed to the model audio.
21. The Max. Attempts menu allows teachers to choose how many times learners can practice reading aloud.
22. Click on the Advanced drop-down option.
23. The Grade Calculation setting allows you to choose the value of the activity in the gradebook. You can choose from two normal or strict options.
24. The Human/Machine Grading setting allows you to choose which grade is sent to the gradebook. The available options are Never use machine eval. for grade, Use human or machine eval. for grade, Always use machine eval. grade.
The Recording and AI options allow users to set the audio and recording settings of the Read Aloud activity.
26. To allow Read Aloud to transcribe and evaluate students’ audio, check the box next to Enable AI.
Leave the next four settings (Line Transcriber, Passage Transcriber, AWS Region and Days to keep file) as the default as they do not apply to Avenue. These settings are relevant when using Amazon Web Services, which is a cloud platform used to store apps and data.
27. If you wish to adjust the WPM score assigned by Read Aloud, choose Adjust by fixed amount from the WPM Adjust(AI) drop-down menu. Note that you can set this amount more accurately after the machine has graded the transcriptions and you have an estimate of the average number of mistakes the machine has made throughout the evaluation and grading process.
To ignore errors found by the program, choose Ignore all errors.
If you do not want to change the machine score, choose No adjustment.
The Post attempt options allow the teacher to link a Read Aloud activity to other activities such as reading comprehension questions, writing forums, or other pronunciation and speaking activities.
28. Choose the activity you wish to follow the Read Aloud activity from the Link to next activity drop-down menu.
29. From the Evaluation display drop-down menu, choose how you would like the results to appear on the activity page.
30. Click on the Grade drop-down option.
31. Set the Grade Type to Point (numeric) or Scale.
Note: If Point is chosen, you must set a Maximum grade.
32. A Grade category can be selected, if grade categories are set up for this course.
33. The Grade to pass should be set here if the Poodll Read Aloud grade is set on Point or Scale.
34. In the Grade Options, choose the grading calculation for the Read Aloud activity. If learners are allowed multiple attempts, you can chose the score of latest attempt, or the highest scoring attempt to be accounted for in their grade.
Settings in the Common module section are common to many Moodle activities and resources.
The Availability setting is used to Show/Hide the activity. This is identical to using the Show/Hide icons when the Turn editing on function is enabled on a course home page.
The ID Number setting sets an ID number for advanced use of the gradebook. (This is not used in the LINC courseware.)
Settings in the Restrict access section can be used to limit access to the activity. (More information is available in Setting up and Using Restrict Access Settings.)
35. Click on the Add restriction... button to display the Add restriction pop-up.
Settings in the Activity completion section are used to set Completion tracking, grading options and the expected completion date. (More information is available in Setting up and Using Completion Tracking.)
The Tags section can be used to add keywords to the activity.
36. Click on the Save and display button to save/update the activity or click the Save and return to course button.
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