Conversation with a Chatbot before an Online EFL Group Discussion and the Effects on Critical Thinking

By Yoshiko Goda, M. Yamada, Hideya Matsukawa, Koji Hata, Seisuke Yasunami. 2014

99 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This study investigated learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) who engaged in a group discussion and saw how their discussion was affected by a preceding conversation with a chatbot. The chatbot was designed to reflect the Socratic inquiry method based on Eliza, a computer program developed for psychotherapy. Two case studies were conducted, and 130 university students (Case 1: n=63; Case 2: n=67) were divided into experimental and control groups and observed. Case 1 served as the pilot study and focused on the effects of a chatbot conversation on the discussion; the critical thinking, satisfaction, and number of conversations in experimental and control groups were analyzed. Case 2 examined the difference in critical thinking preand post-discussion in both groups. Case 1 showed that a preceding conversation with a chatbot might lead to an increase in the number of contributions that students made to conversations and could increase the number of conversations in which the students participated. Case 2 results showed that pre-discussion with a chatbot could increase the students’ awareness of critical thinking and enable them to form inquiring mindsets.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Clinical Psychology, Education

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7369985c714674439f192f52a49957d9889994ee

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Artificial Intelligence

1. Gustavo Marcos-Matás
2. Andrew Thompson
3. Raquel Chocarro
4. Zelinda Sherlock
5. Luke K. Fryer
6. Mary D. Ainley
7. Mónica Cortiñas
8. Aaron Gibson

In Clinical Psychology

1. Mary D. Ainley

In Education

1. Andrew Thompson
2. Luke K. Fryer
3. Mary D. Ainley
4. K. Ann Renninger
5. Reinhard Pekrun

Citations in the corpus

• Artificial Intelligence (AI) Student Assistants in the Classroom: Designing Chatbots to Support Student Success (2022, background): “For example, Goda et al. (2014) designed a chatbot to supplement instruction for English foreign language learners and found that conversations with a chatbot before learning sessions increased users’ engagement and performance.”
• Teachers’ attitudes towards chatbots in education: a technology acceptance model approach considering the effect of social language, bot proactiveness, and users’ characteristics (2021, background): “Goda et al. (2014) found higher quality debates when students have had a previous conversation about the topic with an online agent.”
• Stimulating and sustaining interest in a language course: An experimental comparison of Chatbot and Human task partners (2017, background): “One technology that has been suggested as a potentially powerful tool for enhancing students' language learning efforts is the area of Chatbots (Goda, Yamada, Matsukawa, Hata, & Yasunami, 2014; Stickler & Hampel, 2015; Fryer & Carpenter, 2006, Fryer & Nakao, 2009; Coniam, 2008).”