Robotic Chinese language tutor: personalising progress assessment and feedback or taking over your job?

Abstract

<jats:sec> <jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Purpose</jats:title> <jats:p>The shortage of Chinese language teachers have been identified as a pressing issue globally. This paper aims to respond to the needs by investigating and designing the learning innovation with autonomous programmable robot, NAO.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Design/methodology/approach</jats:title> <jats:p>By thoughtfully embedding NAO robot into teaching basic Chinese language, this research demonstrates an inquiry qualitative case study of artificial intelligence design principles and learning engagement with rule-based reasoning and progress test design.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Findings</jats:title> <jats:p>This state-of-the arts robot use its emotion recognition and body language automated (LED eye with various colours) to demonstrate the Chinese words, to increase learners’ understanding and enhance their memory of the words learned. The responses conclude that the novel learning experience is more fun and interesting, thus the engagement from the axis of novelty, interactivity, motivation and interest is enhanced.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Research limitations/implications</jats:title> <jats:p>It is recognised that the number of research participants was small, but the qualitative finding demonstrate key issues and recommendation that may inspire future empirical research.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Practical implications</jats:title> <jats:p>Today, robotics is a rapidly growing field and has received significant attention in education. Humanoid robots are now increasingly used in fields such as education, hospitality, entertainment and health care. Educational robots are anticipated to serve as teaching assistants.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Originality/value</jats:title> <jats:p>The learning engagement paradigm has shifted from manual engagement to personal response systems or mixed-reality on mobile platforms, and now with the humanoid robot, the recommendation of four principles and future work and for designing humanoid robot as a language tutor are discussed. The educational robot model can be changed to a newer robot such as CANBOT U05E.</jats:p> </jats:sec>

Artificial Intelligence for Student Assessment: A Systematic Review

“…There are some interesting real experiences around AI, and the Horizon Report [17] compiles some of them, such as Watson Tutor by IBM, which has been tested with teachers and students in Texas or with Canvas LMS; another experience is from UC San Diego, the DSMLP (Data Science/Machine Learning Platform), which uses machine learning to provide access to resources and student projects; the third example is Boost, a mobile app integrated with Canvas LMS, a personal assistant for online learning; or finally, the intelligent tool Edulai, for assessing and developing soft skills. These experts [17] consider that "despite ethical concerns, the higher education sector of AI applications related to teaching and learning is projected to grow significantly" (p. 27).…”

Robotics Utilization in Automatic Vision-Based Assessment Systems From Artificial Intelligence Perspective: A Systematic Review

“…Robotics has been a fast-developing field that has attracted considerable interest in education [1]. Nowadays, researchers focus their efforts on developing robots that can assist people with various activities [2].…”

“…The design of robots based on artificial intelligence (AI) is regarded as a link between robotics and AI. AI and humanoid robots are not science fiction but realistic inventions rapidly used in innovation studies and interdisciplinary applications in education, hospitality and healthcare [1]. AI includes the development of computer systems that perform tasks automatically without human intervention [3].…”

“…Education is the most important element in achieving a sustainable life because it allows individuals to learn new knowledge and academic skills. In recent years, robots have been frequently utilised for education as robots teaching second language, such as the Chinese language [1], education robots assisting therapy sessions for children with communication disorders [14] and robots motivating children to learn Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) concepts [15].…”

“…Moreover, robots can guide students" behaviour by pronouncing proper words and allowing students to regard these robots as real learning companions [6]. Students argue that the classical classroom is boring and not engaging [1]. Considerable research indicated that robots are engaging and motivating for learners.…”