Use AI to read personal assignment formulations for the students
When students are given an assignment, they typically need to read a lot of text. However, I experience that many students do not read this text and, therefore, do not understand the task. Often, they skim over the text or wait to ask other students what the task is about. One can argue that it's a competency they lack, but one can also turn it around and try to support students in their way of best understanding the content.
In this little experiment, I have tried using audio files generated by the computer that the students are given. By removing the focus from the text, I try to create a space where the content is paramount, personalized, and with minimal distraction.
The personalized part is particularly interesting, as I can create differentiated audio files for the students – down to the individual student. Previously, it required me to record it myself, and I had to do it many times for it to be the same result. For this course, I generated five audio files of two to four minutes, thus five different levels of the same assignment formulation.
I have used Listnr, which can convert text into realistic speech, for this project. The Danish pronunciation is still funny, but if you choose English, it's fluent.
Using Listnr also means that I can create many audio files, and I only need to make a few adjustments in my text to adapt it to a different type of student.
However, there can be challenges in using AI to convert texts into sounds. In this case, it costs money to use the service, but there is also a need to focus on GDPR and where data is stored and processed.

Below are three examples of assignment formulations.
The sound below is premium text-to-speech.
elow are a couple of examples of the same task (non-premium sound).
A future perspective in this technology would be for students to request the assignment to be presented in the way they learn best. For example, a student could ask for the assignment as a video clip, read by a famous person, in a comic book style, as a guide, or even as a computer game. Each student will choose the style that best suits them and can change it.