Applied Webservices Platform Supported Through Modified Edit Distance Algorithm: Automated Phonetic Transcription Grading Tool (APTgt)

Abstract

The abstract should summarize the contents of the paper in short terms, i.e. 150–250 words. This research proposes a platform to improve the user experience of Communications Disorders (CMDS) faculty and their students. Traditionally CMDS faculty have the task of training new scholars in the field on communication disorders in the craft of phonetic transcription utilizing the using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). This can be a phoneme by phoneme transcription of words that have to be analyzed in a phoneme by phoneme process. In the department of Computer Science (CS), we had to opportunity to engage in this participatory design exercise with CMDS to analyze and automate this process. This project utilizes a variant of the Edit Distance algorithm for preprocessing the distance between the phonetic transcriptions of the professor’s provided key and student’s response. We call this platform, the Automated Phonetic Transcription grading tool, APTgt. The platform dramatically speeds up the grading process (i.e. instant feedback) as compared to traditional manual grading. The case discussed is a complex multivariate problem in the field of Communications Disorders of using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) as a transcription language to support students learning the IPA language. Our focus was to develop an engaging, easy to use platform that can support interactive online learning and reduce complexity of evaluation and feedback for transcript tasks.