Text to Speech software

Mike,

Thanks for your reply to my comment about our product Speech-Over (www.speechover.com) for adding text to speech (TTS) narration to e-learning and training presentations to save time and costs.

I am happy you have set down your objections to text to speech in e-learning so clearly so we can address them one by one.

1. Articulation. A couple of years ago I would have agreed with you, but Speech-Over engineers have made a breakthrough in improving the articulation of TTS voices: by entering simple punctuation in the text, the voice can be made to articulate like the best public speakers. To hear what I am talking about, see the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fuD15hpUbg - (which is the sample on our website.)

2. Motivate people to action. I submit that corporate students come to their e-learning already motivated (the boss wants it!). The most important thing is to present the material clearly and consistently, including correct diction and articulation so that they can easily understand and retain the material. Our customers report that the retention of the material is the same with TTS as with human voice.

3. Authentic. Our customers have found that once the student begins to learn, they accept  and trust the TTS voice just as they would a lecturer with a regional accent. One customer actually notified the learners at the beginning of the course that the voice would be TTS so they knew what to expect.

4. Time required to adjust the articulation. Here you make a good point. To improve the articulation as in #1 above, the Speech-Over user has to enter special pause punctuation (a vertical bar | )  in the text. And, the user has to know the rules of effective public speaking to know where to put the pauses (these rules are presented in a Speech-Over tutorial).  I expect that e-learning text editors can do this quickly, but the time required does need to be taken into account.

I agree with your suggestion that companies that want to use TTS voices in developing e-learning and training should run tests to evaluate the savings and to compare retention of material with courses developed with human voices. Free Speech-Over trials are available for this purpose.