Otter.ai Announces Otter for Education at Educause
October 31, 2018
First version of Otter Voice Notes for universities to launch in
December 2018 informed by input from pilot customers
DENVER–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Startup Alley S19 — At Educause 2018, AISense, Inc., which does
business as Otter.ai, announced its intention to launch Otter
for Education, a version of Otter Voice Notes designed to meet the
needs of universities and other higher level education institutions, in
December 2018. Otter.ai also announced that Tulane University, Western
Kentucky University and UCLA have signed agreements to use Otter Voice
Notes, as an accessibility aid by students that have a note-taking
accommodation. These pilot customers are informing the account
management and end-user features of Otter for Education.
Since its launch earlier this year, thousands of individual students
have become users of Otter Voice Notes. A substantial number have signed
up for our premium plan availing of education user discounted pricing of
$4.99 per month. The variety of use cases include lecture note-taking;
transcription of research interviews; capturing notes from group study
sessions; and processing of public audio data for research purposes.
“We are excited that Otter will bring AI into classrooms and will
dramatically improve education effectiveness,” said Sam Liang, CEO of
Otter.ai. “Students now have searchable class notes with synchronized
audio, and real-time transcription making classes accessible for
students who have difficulty following what a teacher is saying,” he
continued.
Disability services departments at several leading universities have
begun to promote the application as an alternative accessibility tool
for students. Otter is viewed as being more full featured, usable and
economical compared with competing technologies that were designed
specifically as an assistive technology for note-taking. Otter goes
beyond assisting and is an empowering technology for users who can
activate it in any environment using the mobile app or browser.
Given the interest from educational institutions, Otter.ai initiated a
pilot program to enable trial of Otter Voice Notes for use by students
requiring note taking assistance. Participants also agreed to deliver
feedback regarding how to optimize our forthcoming enterprise release
for Education. UCLA, Tulane, and Western Kentucky University, are among
several universities that have signed up to be part of the Otter for
Education pilot program. Participating students may rely on peer
note-taking assistance and may currently use other assistive
technologies.
The feedback from use of Otter as an accessibility tool has been very
positive and resulted in interest from others on campus. At one
institution, the athletics department wants to use Otter to take and
share notes for members of the basketball team while they are traveling.
At another the student welfare department is considering other uses for
the technology for note taking during interviews.
Kathryn Fernandez, Executive Director for Campus Accessibility at Tulane
University, said that “Otter is a promising new assistive technology for
students that require note-taking assistance. It not only provides
recording and synchronized speech recognition, it can recognize who is
speaking and integrates search and keyword extraction.”
Reticence on the part of educators regarding the use of recording in the
classroom is allayed as they may be given control over who can access
transcripts live that they record via their own instance of Otter and
choose to share. Others view it as a method to ensure participation for
all students in the classroom and are actively embracing the technology.
College lectures at many leading institutions are now recorded and
published online. Manual transcription is expensive and takes time.
Otter enables real-time transcription and is considerably less costly.
Administrators with responsibility for disability services,
accessibility technology, or IT in education can learn more about Otter
for Education and potential to participate in our pilot program on the
web at otter.ai/edu. Those that are attending Educause in Denver may
connect with the company at Booth S19.
About Otter.ai
Otter.ai is the creator of Otter Voice Notes, a smart note-taking and
collaboration application for web and mobile that uses Ambient Voice
Intelligence™ proprietary technology to give people the power to
capture, scan, search, and share important parts of voice conversations.
Otter.ai is based in Silicon Valley with a team of experienced Ph.Ds and
engineers from Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Nuance. Follow Otter.ai on Twitter
and learn more at otter.ai.
Download Otter Voice Notes from the Apple
App Store, Google
Play Store, or on the Web at otter.ai.
Contacts
for AISense
Marie Domingo, 650-888-5642
marie@mariedomingo.com
press@aisense.com
or
David
Templeton, 203-530-0458
dbtcom@gmail.com
press@aisense.com