Abstract:

In today’s education landscape, technology has become a necessary enabler to drive the acquisition of 21st century skills such as creativity, innovation, communication, critical thinking, creative problem-solving among learners, and to design more engaging, active and authentic learning environments. In Malaysia, there is a suggestion that Malaysian teaching methodologies are outdated (Mahathir, 2018), and technology-enhanced learning spaces are becoming vital to the learning process (The Horizon Report, 2019). However, there is still the issue of designing more engaging learning environments, and maintaining learner’s attention and retention rates (Gilyazova & Zamoshchanskii, 2020). Today’s Gen Z learners are highly visual and therefore demand more visually appealing content in order to stay involved in their learning process (Yeh, Lan and Lin, 2018), thus creating the research gap for the redesigning of more holistic and engaging learning environments. With the advent of COVID-19 and the new norm of online learning, there is an even greater need to ensure that learning continues even after the online classes have ended.

Students, when learning content, may experience less interactions as the teacher is not around to scaffold them. Socio-constructivism by Vygotsky (1978) posits that learning takes place when learners engage in interactions and discussions, and tasks are supported with assistance from more experienced peers / tutors. Armstrong (2019) further posits that scaffolding is an integral part of the learning process. As such, using Artificial Intelligent (AI) chatbots during those times will increase the support they will receive during those times, especially using natural language to simulate intelligent conversations between humans and chatbots. Such AI Conversational chatbots can do the following: 1. Simulate intelligent human language interaction through text or speech. 2. Promote social interaction between people and chatbots, especially with AI conversational agents using natural language processing 3. Establish a social-constructivist teaching-learning environment enabling interaction in a virtual setting. Research in AI further showed a void in the use of chatbots as teaching and learning agents. Therefore, this research investigates the use of AI chatbots as scaffolding agents to support student learning outside of the classroom.

MERLIN’s Playground is a project funded by Malaysia’s TM Research & Development agency and carried out in Multimedia University (MMU), Malaysia, to design and create learning spaces that incorporate mixed reality technologies. The MERLIN virtual learning assistant scaffolds students by allowing them to chat with it at their own convenience, anytime and anyplace. The content developed in MERLIN is mapped to the topics of a class in 3D modeling and continues the delivery of content in a media-rich learning environment. Unlike typical chatbots that return content in text form, MERLIN displays content in a combination of media, such as text, graphics, animation, videos and narration, mapped to Mayer’s (1998) Theory of Multimedia Learning as its theoretical framework. A survey was conducted on students in MMU to gauge their perceptions of using an AI chatbot in their learning process. Results were positive in the use of AI chatbots as a method for scaffolding learners and for providing more holistic learning in today’s classrooms.

Keywords:

Artificial Intelligence, Scaffolding, Chatbot, Virtual Learning Assistant, MERLIN, Multimedia University, Malaysia.