Abstract:

Educators in various disciplines have been incessantly trying innovation for the purpose of keeping learners motivated and enhancing students' learning experience. Language educators have been striving to apply innovative technologies for the same purpose of student learning. VR and AR have been used to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of education of students and training of employees. AI has been applied in various fields such as medicine, customer service, education transportation, weather, and energy. In addition, the interactive feature with robots facilitates language learning. Accordingly, the goal of the study is to enhance student learning motivation and improve student learning experiences by developing a robot-assisted virtual reality-based English learning AI application. A pilot study was conducted using interviews to explore student feedback and motivation toward robot-assisted language learning (RALL). The study invited two college students who were willing to try the innovation. Both students showed a positive attitude toward RALL. Visualization based on the VR scenarios aroused their interests and learning motivation. The combination of AI and robotics attracted and kept learners’ attention. Students enjoyed learning at their own pace. It fostered student engagement in learning and improved the knowledge construction in practices.

Keywords:

Virtual reality, artificial intelligence, robot-assisted language learning.