DK HHX “Personal AI-trainer for speaking German”
The module was conducted 4th Oct. 2024 at Business Highschool Svendborg (Svendborg Erhvervsgymnasier, HHX) with 24 students (? males, ? females) from grade 11 (HHX, 1.g) enrolled in the module. The purpose was to support the students´ active oral use of the foreign language.
Duration: 1 hour + brief individual preparation, integrated as an innovative learning activity in a 2-hours module of the subject ´German language´.
The teacher has planned follow-up modules for a continuous personal training of the students´ oral German skills.
Teaching Design
Learning objectives for the students, according to the regulation for the German subject at business highschool level:
– Understand spoken standard German on familiar topics conveyed through various media.
– Engage in a clearly understandable, coherent, and reasonably fluent conversation in German on topics they are familiar with, as well as explain and discuss different viewpoints.
– Express themselves orally in German about non-studied German texts and topics using simple vocabulary and commonly occurring set phrases and expressions.
– Use relevant listening and reading strategies, as well as relevant oral and written communication strategies.
Furthermore, it was intended to train the students’ critical thinking in relation to artificial intelligence.
The students had no direct co-influence on the design of this very short module. However, they were prompted to individually choose a scenario for interaction with their personal AI-trainer.
Content, activities, conditions:
1) Students´ individual preparation to the module, delivering answers to 3 questions about AI-training of language skills. On purpose, no preparation of the technology was required as to the explorative approach of the module.
2) Teacher´s brief demonstration of Gliglish.
3) Students´ work with Gliglish – planned as individual work, realized for approx. 90 % of the students as pairwise or group-wise work
4) The students reflected in groups on interacting with a robot and their perceptions of this situation, as well as their linguistic challenges and their learning outcomes
5) Joint final evaluation in the class about the learning process and the use of AI
As their learning products, the students had to deliver their written reflections in Danish.
Pedagogical methods: The students worked individually and exchanged in groups of 3-4 students on the exercise. Each student delivered a personal learning product.
Evaluation
The evaluation was undertaken by the students with written notes as well as orally at the end of the module.
In a final voting, approx. 60 % of the students recommended use of Gliglish for personal training of their oral German language skills. Some students had been reluctant and did not vote. Some critical voices mentioned technical problems or problems of the platform to identify their pronounciation. Other students described the dialogue with a chatbot as “a bit artificial and awkward”, missing “a natural flow”. On the other hand, some students achieved a kind of breakthrough. Some of them dared to speak up for kind of the first time. One of them, a dyslexic young person, had found an operational approach to listening, reading, and speaking the German language, and he underlined very excited the great potential of the tool.
These data were supplemented with the teacher´s comments and observations from an external observer.
The observer stated that nearly all students preferred working pairwise. In some constallations this choice led to only one student in the pair actually speaking, with the other student monitoring and assisting the exercise. The reasons for these choices were not identified during the short module, but the teacher concluded on strictly individual work for the next iteration of this exercise to enhance personal training.
Students´ considerations
[Extracts from their deliveries]
”Den kan hjælpe en med at få snakket tysk noget oftere og så kan den udfordre en fordi den nogle gange bruger nogle svære ord.”
”Jeg tror, at det kan hjælpe med at få en bedre tysk udtale, hvis man vil sætte sig ind i det”
”Den kan være god til at få en til at snakke og høre tysk.”
”Den er altid tilgængelig, det gør man kan øve så tit man vil.”
”Det fungerer meget godt. Når der ikke er nogen person til at hjælpe mig, så kan man bruge teknologien som lærer.”
”Gliglish kan hjælpe med bedre udtale.”
Digital production
Gliglish was chosen, recommended by the ICT-pedagogical coordinator of the college, as a user-friendly and easily accessible program with no Log-in required. In addition, the program offers possibilities for different skills levels: open dialogue or dialogue with suggested questions and statements. A mix of written and oral communication is possible, too.
Retrospective reflection: A survey related to the exercise made the students reflect on the efficiency and the reliability of the given AI language model. Although the module did not focus on the technology behind the language model, the students met and could apply some of the relevant terms, such as “chatbot”, “prompting”, and “profiles”.
Digital literacy
The activity included a focus on ethics through the teacher´s explicit work questions.
The module was planned as a highly individually relevant activity to offer personal training. However, not all students grabbed this opportunity, but chose to support their mates. The reasons were not identified during this module.
Critical thinking: The students reflected on the use of Glighlish and how the tool could help them speak more German and improve. They discovered advantages and some barriers.
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Environment / external world
The teacher underlines the necessity of incorporating more and more exercises with AI as a way to add ressources to the individual students.
The module was not conducted in the education chain. But collaborative learning environments or modules across educational levels can be imagined, where students from different programs could share experiences, strategies, and feedback on their use of Gligglish. This could foster a culture of mutual support across different studies and enhance overall educational outcomes.
Elevcitater, HHX Svendborg 1.g
