Evelina Jaleniauskiene

This article investigates an enhancement of English-speaking fluency by using an AI — based chatbot as a component of digital literacy development. The aim of the research is to examine the effectiveness of integrating a SmallTalk2me chatbot in the training of future EFL teachers. The study adopts a mixed methods approach, including interviews, surveys and analysis of students’ learning outcomes. The experiment was carried out in two groups. The experimental group was engaged with the use of the SmallTalk2Me chatbot in class, while the control group was taught by conventional methods. The results indicate that the experimental group exhibited a significantly higher level of motivation for learning than the control group. Analysis of the results demonstrates a substantial contribution of an AI-based SmallTalk2Me platform to learners’ speaking fluency, motivation and engagement in the learning process. Observations revealed that AI based chatbots should be included into English language teachers training programs. The relevance of this research may considerably influence the development of AI-based education and digital literacy skills, especially in remote areas within the country with the lack of foreign language teachers.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) occupies a transforming role in education, including language teaching and learning. Using bibliometric analysis, this study aims to overview the most recent research related to the use of AI in language education. Specifically, it reviews the existing body of research, productivity in this field in terms of authors and countries, co-authorship, most cited references and most popular journals that publish on this topic. Furthermore, the study also analyses the most common keywords and extracts relevant terms that reveal trending topics. For the period between 2018 and 2022, 2,609 documents were retrieved from the Web of Science database. The results showed that each year a consistent number of publications on the application of AI in language education appears. Scholars from China and the USA have been revealed to be most productive. Computer Assisted Language Learning contains the highest number of publications. Within the research on the use of AI in language education, the most targeted language-learning aspects were acquisition, motivation, performance, vocabulary, instruction, feedback, and impact. The analysis of the most common keywords related to AI-based solutions showed that mobile-assisted language learning, virtual reality, augmented reality, elements of gamification, games, social robots, machine translation, intelligent tutoring systems, chatbots, machine learning, neural networks, automatic speech recognition, big data, and deep learning were most popular.

In education, infographics may be used to promote active learning and engage learners in the creation of more diverse learning artefacts. This study aims to analyze the application of infographics in higher education. The authors conducted a scoping review of the scientific articles to analyze the use of infographics across a variety of university subjects. The findings revealed that the most frequent educational practices were those that merged both ready-made infographics and students’ hands-on experience in creating their own infographics. Such learning activities facilitated the learning of the subject-related material and helped students to advance with the creation of this popular form of modern communication. The tasks including infographics also represented an enhanced mission of higher education as students were given opportunities to develop a number of personal and career readiness skills and capabilities simultaneously, such as digital, visual and information literacy, critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration skills. The educational recommendations and technological solutions proposed might diversify teaching and learning practices in higher education.

In the updated version of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment – Companion Volume (Council of Europe 2020), the Action-Oriented Approach is highlighted as the most viable approach for learning languages. The present study explored students’ reflections on the collaborative project based on this approach. The project was offered to the learners at a tertiary level during a course of English (C1 level). Analysis of the data revealed that the project appeared to be useful for the development of both general and communicative language competences. Although collaboration was indicated among the most satisfactory aspects, the learners also experienced the most difficulties with it. Despite the finding that most students considered such a project to be of acceptable difficulty, their level of satisfaction differed significantly. The results point to some potential challenges while shifting to the Action-Oriented Approach as a more active language learning approach. Not all students may be ready for the new type of language learning which requires higher levels of cognitive effort and more collaboration in comparison to traditional language classes. As this approach marks a significant turn in language education, it is anticipated that both the detailed presentation of the project and students’ reflections on it will help to increase the awareness of other language educators seeking to design quality action-based projects.

The mission of higher education institutions is to prepare future professionals for a rapidly changing labor market, yet what skills we teach students, and how we teach them, is highly problematic. The ability to collaborate is crucial for success in professional and academic endeavor; the challenge for foreign language educators is to shift the focus of courses in ways that address the development of collaboration skills. Yet, this also becomes a challenge in scholarly literature on English for Specific Purposes (ESP), since research in this field has been somewhat limited, i.e., most commonly it investigates collaborative writing as a way of developing collaboration. Furthermore, the explicit teaching of collaboration, as well as the inclusion of diverse tasks to enhance collaboration, are often neglected by researchers. Also neglected in this field of research are the challenges and opportunities that students experience while learning to collaborate during ESP classes. The paper aims at acquiring more in-depth insights into the phenomenon of collaboration during ESP classes to facilitate the practice of language educators who can no longer neglect the urgent need to develop collaboration through their classes. The authors of the paper, who were also the designers of ESP tasks, sought to develop collaboration skills by both engaging learners in collaborative tasks and integrating additional measures to address this skill. Qualitative data acquired via observations and semi-structured interviews revealed that such tasks could contribute to students’ overall performance to improve language proficiency because they enhance motivation and engagement. Apart from collaboration skills, they contribute to the development of many essential skills vital for engagement in the twenty-first century workplace. Notwithstanding, they pose challenges to students and this indicates the need for more frequent collaborative tasks and progress with additional measures that develop students’ collaboration abilities in higher education.

Problem solving is indicated among the most important 21st century skills and therefore many educational practitioners and researchers suggest to include the development of this skill in diverse subjects across university studies. However, practice of this skill development is usually limited to the application of problem-based learning, which leaves it only among many other goals. The fact also remains that this popular curricular invention is most commonly considered as a content-based method, which puts greater emphasis on subject-related knowledge acquisition in the context of solving problems. Indeed, solving ill-structured problems is not an easy activity and what higher education needs is a more explicit focus on the development of this skill in students. The article seeks to scientifically and practically explain the system on how this educational aim can be attained. Based on literature review, we design a tripartite system for enabling students to learn collaborative problem solving. It comprises three main parts: preparation for solving ill-structured problems in collaboration, inclusion into the processes of solving such problems and evaluation of the processes as well as outcomes achieved. The designed system is universal and can be implemented across various disciplines and subjects in higher education.