Playing has been part of people's lives since the beginning of time. However, play
does not take place in silence (isolated from speech and sound). The games people play
allow them to interact and to learn through experiences. Speech often forms an integral
part of playing games. Video games also allow players to interact with a virtual world
and learn through those experiences. Speech input has previously been explored as a
way of interacting with a game, as talking is a natural way of communicating. By talking
to a game, the experiences created during gameplay become more valuable, which
in turn facilitates effective learning. In order to enable a game to “hear", some issues
need to be considered. A game, that will serve as a platform for speech input, has to be
developed. If the game will contain learning elements, expert knowledge regarding the
learning content needs to be obtained. The game needs to communicate with a speech
recognition system, which will recognise players' speech inputs. To understand the role
of speech recognition in a game, players need to be tested while playing the game. The
players' experiences and opinions can then be fed back into the development of speech
recognition in educational games. This process was followed with six Financial Management students on the NWU Vaal Triangle campus. The students played FinMan, a game which teaches the fundamental concepts of the “Time value of money" principle. They
played the game with the keyboard and mouse, as well as via speech commands. The
students shared their experiences through a focus group discussion and by completing a
questionnaire. Quantitative data was collected to back the students' experiences. The
results show that, although the recognition accuracies and response times are important
issues, speech recognition can play an essential part in educational games. By freeing
learners to focus on the game content, speech recognition can make games more accessible and engaging, and consequently lead to more effective learning experiences. / MSc (Computer Science), North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2014
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NWUBOLOKA1/oai:dspace.nwu.ac.za:10394/10607 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Booth, Martin |
| Publisher | North-West University |
| Source Sets | North-West University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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