ITRI has assisted Taiwan Government to develop smart city policy initiatives, including setting up the framework of AI application projects. The VoiceTube project that started in 2018, is one of the successful public-private-partnerships following ITRI’s policy initiatives. ITRI also helps the Taiwan Government and firms to promote these smart city projects in order to accelerate the spread and export of Taiwan smart city solutions.
Jia-Ying Chen from ISTI, Taiwan Smart City Development Project Office of Industrial
Development Bureau, M.O.E.A.
Under the wave of globalization, the construction of English learning environment has become the primary task of all countries around the globe, Taiwan is no exception. However, under the traditional education system in Taiwan, English learning can be only improved in the field of reading and writing, for listening and speaking, it’s still insufficient. In addition, the economic gap between urban and rural areas in Taiwan is large, and the learning resources of rural, disadvantaged and low-income families are limited. In addition, although there are many e-learning resources, they cannot provide customized learning services according to the needs and degree of users.
To solve the above problems, with the assistance of the Smart City Development Project of the Industrial Development Bureau of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Voicetube launched an online English learning platform based on AI technology. The platform analyzes the big data of the students' using behavior for many years, and then uses AI identify the degree attribute of the film and distinguish their using preference. Students can choose films of different levels for course study by self-assessment, and after class test will also be provided at the end of the course. According to the test results, the program can plan schedule and summary focus for the students. In addition to recommending new courses that meet the demand, the schedule will also arrange review of old courses, and add interesting gaming interaction to strengthen the continuity of studying. It is expected to help the students to find the most suitable English learning mode through a variety of practical listening, speaking, reading and writing courses.
VoiceTube starts from community learning with 100% complete situational learning method, which makes it a learning experience full of incentives for many potential customers who may not like physical courses or time to take the courses. VoiceTube has been put into use for teaching in 50 junior colleges and 20 enterprises that have chosen to carry out educational training in Taiwan. There are also many cooperative schools and enterprises between Japan and Vietnam, with a total number of beneficiaries reaching 1 million, enabling the way of learning English by watching movies deepen the practical kinetic energy of the students learning English, make them strengthen their short-term English ability in a systematic way, and cultivate the habit of long-term use.
