Robot as a Ventriloquist Doll in a Virtual Situational Learning Environment to Facilitate Learning Through Self-Dialogue

Abstract

One of the ways of thinking about how to finish the learning task is through self-dialogue. Doing so enables learners to ask themselves what should they do and evaluate whether it is appropriate from another point of view. However, learners might have difficulties imagining the scenario and interacting with an imaginary person. They may need a scaffolding tool or a person as a partner to practice the self-dialogue. Besides, the ventriloquist phenomenon in education has been noted as beneficial for learning as it could make the learners understands the idea through dialogue. This study proposed a learning approach that allows the learners to use a robot as a ventriloquist doll for practicing self-dialogue and knowledge application to enhance their learning effectiveness. The experiment was conducted by participating 104 undergraduate learners who enrolled in a Japanese Hospitality Management course. The results showed that the approach used a ventriloquist robot to facilitate learning through self-dialogue exhibited significant effects on motivation, anxiety, and better learning outcomes. This study provides a novel area of insight into the use of robots in learning, by integrating digital technology with pedagogical approaches to create an immersive intelligent learning environment and offer a self-dialogue mechanism to foster collaborative learning tasks.