A comparative study on the development of Chinese and English abilities of Chinese primary school students through two bilingual reading modes: human-AI robot interaction and paper books

To address the challenges encountered by Chinese primary school students, particularly left-behind and migrant children, who exhibit a preference for animations, video games, and short videos over reading books and struggle with Chinese-English bilingual skills, this study introduces an educational robot AI-assisted method for simultaneous bilingual reading. To assess the effectiveness of this method, a 6-month Chinese-English bilingual extracurricular reading comparative experiment was conducted involving 85 grade 5 students from two classes in a primary school in Hangzhou, China. The AI-assisted class freely read 100 bilingual/English electronic picture books and 200 Chinese electronic classic serial picture books by employing the AI-assisted human-computer interactive electronic reading mode of the “Educational Robot+Audio Electronic Picture Book+Character-play Based Reading.” In contrast, the paper book group read the same content presented in the traditional paper book format, following the “regular independent reading” mode. Post-experimental analyses were conducted employing t-tests and MANCOVA and the results revealed that: the primary factors influencing reading effectiveness are the choice of reading materials, reading tools, and reading mode, while reading time does not emerge as the principal influencing factor. Furthermore, students in the AI class demonstrated significant enhancements in bilingual reading motivation, reading amount, reading comprehension, independent learning ability, pronunciation proficiency, and test scores compared to their peers in the paper book class. The AI-assisted reading mode utilizing educational robots garnered positive feedback from teachers, parents, and students. It offers the potential to effectively substitute parental involvement in parent–child reading and English tutoring, while also enabling the simultaneous acquisition of bilingual proficiency in both Chinese and English. This approach proves to be highly effective, cost-efficient, and convenient, particularly for enhancing children’s foreign language abilities. Moreover, it fosters positive reading habits and independent learning skills among primary school students, contributes to the establishment of lofty aspirations, and enhances bilingual performance. Overall, this innovative mode offers an effective means of facilitating children’s acquisition of bilingualism and foreign language skills, as well as promoting reading education

Virtual Reality Games for Motor Rehabilitation

This paper presents a fuzzy logic based method to track user satisfaction without the need for devices to monitor users physiological conditions. User satisfaction is the key to any product’s acceptance; computer applications and video games provide a unique opportunity to provide a tailored environment for each user to better suit their needs. We have implemented a non-adaptive fuzzy logic model of emotion, based on the emotional component of the Fuzzy Logic Adaptive Model of Emotion (FLAME) proposed by El-Nasr, to estimate player emotion in UnrealTournament 2004. In this paper we describe the implementation of this system and present the results of one of several play tests. Our research contradicts the current literature that suggests physiological measurements are needed. We show that it is possible to use a software only method to estimate user emotion

Active Learning

In the context of globalization changes in educational systems, it is important to modify approaches to the educational process and introduce learning technologies that allow for maximum involvement in learning. One such technology is the technology of active learning, which engages learners through participation in the cognitive process and certain tasks as well as through the collective activities of the subjects of the educational process. This book discusses the theoretical analysis of active learning and contains practical recommendations for its implementation

Designing Embodied Interactive Software Agents for E-Learning: Principles, Components, and Roles

Embodied interactive software agents are complex autonomous, adaptive, and social software systems with a digital embodiment that enables them to act on and react to other entities (users, objects, and other agents) in their environment through bodily actions, which include the use of verbal and non-verbal communicative behaviors in face-to-face interactions with the user. These agents have been developed for various roles in different application domains, in which they perform tasks that have been assigned to them by their developers or delegated to them by their users or by other agents. In computer-assisted learning, embodied interactive pedagogical software agents have the general task to promote human learning by working with students (and other agents) in computer-based learning environments, among them e-learning platforms based on Internet technologies, such as the Virtual Linguistics Campus (www.linguistics-online.com). In these environments, pedagogical agents provide contextualized, qualified, personalized, and timely assistance, cooperation, instruction, motivation, and services for both individual learners and groups of learners. This thesis develops a comprehensive, multidisciplinary, and user-oriented view of the design of embodied interactive pedagogical software agents, which integrates theoretical and practical insights from various academic and other fields. The research intends to contribute to the scientific understanding of issues, methods, theories, and technologies that are involved in the design, implementation, and evaluation of embodied interactive software agents for different roles in e-learning and other areas. For developers, the thesis provides sixteen basic principles (Added Value, Perceptible Qualities, Balanced Design, Coherence, Consistency, Completeness, Comprehensibility, Individuality, Variability, Communicative Ability, Modularity, Teamwork, Participatory Design, Role Awareness, Cultural Awareness, and Relationship Building) plus a large number of specific guidelines for the design of embodied interactive software agents and their components. Furthermore, it offers critical reviews of theories, concepts, approaches, and technologies from different areas and disciplines that are relevant to agent design. Finally, it discusses three pedagogical agent roles (virtual native speaker, coach, and peer) in the scenario of the linguistic fieldwork classes on the Virtual Linguistics Campus and presents detailed considerations for the design of an agent for one of these roles (the virtual native speaker)

Metacognition in Learning

Metacognition skills have been proven to have a positive relationship with learning. The strength of metacognition relies heavily on self-efficacy where a student understands his/her learning style, and the ability to use information gathered and align it with his/her learning style. In addition, knowing what you know and how you know it as a student plays a huge role in knowing what you do not know and linking it with what is close or relevant to it, that you know. It is about having skills and knowledge that empowers you to be an independent learner. Literature on classroom practices show a number of short-comings in diverse areas such as poor teacher knowledge, overcrowded classrooms, and lack of resources for learning. An independent student will strive under such an environment by studying independently, searching for resources, and finding multimodal ways of learning. It is also important to note that naturally, human beings are curious and want to learn in order to conquer their world. Hence, Piaget's work of intellectual autonomy cannot be ignored when exploring metacognition. If learning experiences were ideal and developmental, they would be no need to nurture metacognition. Unfortunately, the education systems remove students' curiosity by bringing fake environments into learning that impede creation and imagination. This book emphasises the power of metacognition at different levels of learning. It can be seen as a parallel intervention approach, with expanded knowledge on how to extend existing skills for young children, which is a pre-intervention. Authors in this book bring diverse viewpoints from diverse fields on how to nurture metacognition, thus giving the reader an opportunity to borrow strategies from other fields. This contribution is a mixture of empirical contributions and opinion pieces informed by review of literature