Voice email

Voice email allows teachers to send announcements to learners using their voice online

What is voice email?

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text only version

If you would like to try out the voice email, there is a short demonstration site at http://webct.netspot.com.au that contains:

guides on how to use the voice tools
the opportunity for you to experiment with the voice tools in a WebCT® environment.

To login to this site as a student:

Username: hw_student01	Password: netspot
Username: hw_student02	Password: netspot

To login to this site as a teacher:

Username: hw_staff

Password: netspot

Voice emails, like voice boards, allow you to create online voice messages. While there are aspects of these two tools that are similar, voice email is best suited to direct teacher/learner communication as part of the facilitation of an online course. By contrast, voice boards can be used to support a range of innovative online learning activities.

Voice emails are emails that use voice messages rather than text as the primary means of communicating. However, you can also add text within a voice email.

Voice emails are asynchronous (just like text email) so you can send a voice message and then others can listen to it later and send a text reply.

You can use voice emails for a range of online facilitation and communication purposes such as:

building community and facilitating online courses
general course announcements
icebreaker activities.

Voice emails can be used to facilitate fully or partially online courses. They can also be used to communicate out of class hours with learners in a face-to-face course.

Voice email is easily accessible technology and:

does not require a high level of technical skill from teachers
requires little instruction for learners to understand how to use it.

This guide has been created specifically for the Horizon Wimba voice email tool. However the various sections of the guide should be transferable to any of the several other voice email applications available.

Horizon Wimba voice email

You need to purchase a licence for Horizon Wimba Voice Tools.
Horizon Wimba Voice Tools can be integrated into any learning management system (LMS).
The Horizon Wimba voice email tool can also be embedded into a webpage outside a LMS or linked to webpages.

Who for? Relevance to teaching and learning

Learners

While voice email can be suitable for communicating with all types of learners. However, there are specific learner groups who may benefit significantly from communication via voice email. These are generally learners who prefer an oral mode of communication. Learners with this profile may:

have low literacy levels
be from trade or more practically-oriented vocational backgrounds
have impaired vision.

These learner groups are often disengaged from text-based communication but can be successfully engaged by a spoken medium such as voice email.

Teachers

Voice email can be integrated into fully or partially online courses or face-to-face delivery where there is a need to communicate with learners outside of face-to-face classes. Voice email is extremely effective for:

building online communities
facilitating learning activity, for example, through:

Online delivery

Voice email can be integrated into fully or partially online courses as a medium for building communities, for asynchronous communication and for announcements between the teacher and learners.

Face-to-face delivery

Voice email can be used to enhance face-to-face delivery. Voice email activities can provide an opportunity for learners to receive information outside of scheduled class times.

To see how voice emails have been used with different learner groups, follow the link below to the case study. The case study gives examples of how online voice tools (including voice email) were integrated into a course.

Case Study 1 - Trades and youth

Why use voice email? Challenges and new approaches for teaching and learning

Many of the issues surrounding flexible learning are associated with the limits that text-based communication imposes on online teaching and learning practices. Written text limits the range of communication that can occur online. It also can restrict access for some learners, particularly those with low levels of literacy or those who prefer to communicate in an oral format.

Online voice technologies offer a range of opportunities for new practices in online teaching. Voice email can help you connect with learners who may not always read or respond to written communications. The types of communications that voice email is particularly useful for are:

course reminders and announcements
private messages or feedback
introductions and icebreaker activities.

Communication – the challenges

One significant issue that can challenge teachers working online is that of communicating effectively with all learners so as to achieve the following.

Build a sense of community online

How can you build a community and ensure learners and teachers ‘get to know each other’ and feel comfortable working together when many learners may not be comfortable or fluent with written text as a means of communication?

Facilitate online courses

How can you provide an alternative to written text and ensure that the types of support an online teacher needs to provide are reaching all learners, including those for whom written communication is a barrier?

Engage oral communicators

How can you increase the chances that course announcements and reminders are being received (ie, ‘heard’) by online learners?

Why use voice email? New practices: how voice email can help meet the challenges

Voice email provides new and engaging ways of building a sense of community amongst the learners as well as facilitating some of the ‘course management’ aspects of an online program. For example, you can use voice email for:

introductions and icebreaker activities
getting learners engaged with a course
announcements about online meetings or classes
reminders about tasks due.

Building a sense of community

Voice email can be a very effective means of creating a sense of community.

An advantage of using voice email is that it allows you to use your own voice to ‘personalise’ emails allowing you to build your profile as a ‘real person’ more quickly.
Using voice adds a conversational element to emails that can help build a sense of community more quickly.
Voice emails can also add an element of fun, especially at the beginning of a course when the ‘novelty value’ of a voice email can really capture learners.

Facilitating courses

Voice email is also very useful for sending out announcements, reminders and encouragement to learners. Messages should be structured and at least partially scripted to ensure everyone is receiving a full, clear and detailed announcement while still allowing for the personalisation of the message.
Because voice allows not only a more complex range of tones, but can also convey the intention of a message more clearly and accurately than written text. Voice emails can give you more scope to express degrees of urgency, for example, or in other ways encourage learners to meet course requirements.
For important announcements, voice emails can help ensure that learners who are either not highly text literate or not inclined to read written information, get the message.

However there are a few issues that need to be considered when using voice email.

Authentication of author can be an issue when using voice email as learners are required to manually enter their email address in the from box. Given this, it is possible that the learner may mistype their own email address or, at worst, deliberately enter a false or misleading email address into the email from box. If this functionality is misused, it may cause problems for the facilitator.
Voice email allows you to send your message in both voice and text. However, when using Horizon Wimba voice email system, administrators may set the voice email tool so that you can only reply to emails in text. This can initially create confusion for learners.
When using text-based email, it is a simple matter to select Reply to send a message back to the sender. This is not the case in most voice email applications. Voice emails typically arrive in your mailbox with the voice file as an attachment. To send a voice reply back to the sender, a user must go to the voice email application and create a new voice email from within the interface of the voice email tool. This needs to be made explicit to prevent possible confusion for learners when they receive voice mail.

How? Integrating voice email into teaching and learning

Case study1: Trades and youth describes how voice tools (including voice email) can be integrated into teaching and learning to provide opportunities for learning that would otherwise not have been available to the learners.

Listen to the photostory to hear how teachers in vocational education and training, industry and English as a language contexts have integrated online voice activities.

The downloadable learning activities documents describe some of the voice email related learning activities in more detail.

The pedagogy documents describe the underpinning theory of learning that forms the basis of each learning design.

So, how do you go about integrating voice email into your course? The following section will take you through the steps and offers some advice for first-time users of voice email.

Planning

Voice email can be used for multiple purposes such as building a sense of community and facilitating courses by relaying instructions and announcements.

When planning and designing your learning program, consider how voice email communication could benefit the learners. Some of the things you will need to consider are:
- the profile of your learners
- access to resources such as computers, Internet
- will you provide support for those who experience audio or IT problems?
Decide on where your voice email will be hosted.
Set up the voice email prior to course commencement. Plan your voice emails communications around key course requirements. Set up a voice email template so you can send group emails to remind learners of tasks or assessment due, or for any other course announcements you want to make online.

Developing communication activities

Voice email is a great way to capture learners’ attention and get them ready to learn. As an announcement tool, it can also help you keep learners on track with the various activities they need to undertake.

When preparing voice emails there are a few things to keep in mind.

You can set up a template so that you can send voice email to all the learners in the course, just as you would set up a group in your text email.
- – In WebCT® you’ll need to enter all the addresses manually to create the template. From then on you can send automatically to the group.
- – In Blackboard® this process is automated (see graphic below)
Not all voice emails need to go to the whole group. You can send individual voice emails to individual learners if they need additional support, feedback, or reminders or if you think they are not accessing other written communications.
You may need to script instructions and announcements to ensure your message is accurate and consistent.
Use a welcoming tone. Speak clearly and not too quickly.
Add the message in text as well as voice to provide both options for learners.
Replay the voice message before sending the email, just as you would read over a text message. You can then re-record if necessary.
You can also give learners access to a group template if you want them to collaborate via voice email. However, you may find voice boards more suitable for collaborative learning activities.

Sending voice emails

Preparing a voice email is similar to preparing a posting for a voice board. If you are new to voice emails the following steps may help:

compose - think about what you want to say and perhaps make notes
rehearse the message mentally, out loud, or with the aid of written notes
script the final message or at least make sketch notes
record the message and add text as appropriate
review the message (ie, listen to it)
record again if necessary
send the email.

Preparing learners

For learners with minimal computer literacy a demonstration using a data show or on an individual basis is a good way of introducing the technology.
For learners with a higher computer literacy, providing them with a demonstration CD-ROM works well as a way to introduce the technology.
Voice emails are received as HTML, so if a learner’s email is set to Plain text, rather than HTML they will not see anything in the email until they select the View, HTML option.
To listen to the voice message in Horizon Wimba, learners need to click on a link within the email. This takes them to a website where they can play the message.
From the email they can also save the audio file and listen to it again later if they need to.
Most learners master the process of sending voice emails without much trouble. However, it is important to let them know that they can only reply to a voice email in text.
In many other voice email applications, the voice email arrives with the audio part of the message as an attachment.

Tips: what to watch out for so you don’t trip up

Planning communication

Plan how you will use voice emails carefully so that you use the voice tool to the best purpose. Not every online communication is best done this way. It is good to use the tool for maximum impact.
It is generally good practice to add a text version to your voice messages. Using both voice and text should ensure access for learners who have either a visual or hearing impairment.

Technology

Learners will need access to computers with sound cards and speakers (or headsets) to listen to voice emails.
They will need microphones to send a voice email.
Pre-teach the various aspects of audio control before having learners use voice emails. Sound quality of recorded messages can vary greatly depending on the:
- – quality of the microphone
- – type of microphone (headset, internal personal computer microphone, external desktop microphone)
- – distance of microphone from speaker’s mouth
- – record volume level setting.

Recording techniques

It is good practice to leave a second or two after pressing record before recording a message to avoid clipping the first word or two. Similarly, after recording your message, wait a second or two before turning off the record button to avoid clipping the last few words of the message.
Use the pause button to minimise ‘ums’, stumbling and drawn out pauses between points.

Facilitation

Audio and written announcements and instructions need to be very clear.
Use voice email to prepare learners for upcoming activities and to remind them of tasks due.

Working environment

If you are working from home or a noisy office background, noise can be an issue. On the other hand, the background sounds can create a more relaxed environment and a context for what could otherwise be a disembodied ‘voice online’. Just make sure this does not interfere with the clarity of your message.

Technical notes

Voice email can be integrated into learning management systems (LMS) such as WebCT®, or Blackboard®.

It can be embedded into a webpage outside of a LMS or linked to webpages.

Any software required needs to be downloaded and installed (eg, Java^TM, media players).

Ports will need to be enabled.

Horizon Wimba voice email

You will need to purchase licence for Horizon Wimba Voice Tools.

Other voice email tools

The following links are just some examples discovered by the project team of software solutions available for voice email. This information is provided for reference only and is not an endorsement of products or services.

Free

Handybits^TM provides voice email for home users – search in the products section on http://www.handybits.com/voicemail.htm
Vemail provides voice email software – search in the products section on - http://www.nch.com.au
Mailamp (for Outlook® users) - http://www.mailamp.com/
Pure Voice® (can be used with all email applications, but works as a plug in for Eudora® users)

Commercial products

FlashPeak® provides voice email software - http://www.flashpeak.com