Mr Winston, the true English bot Erasmus Project

Project Title

Mr Winston, the true English bot

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Teaching and learning of foreign languages

Project Summary

According to the European Survey on Language Competencies of 2012, English is by far the most taught foreign language in nearly all European countries at all educational levels. Furthermore, it is a key skill for employability: the European Commission Study on Foreign Language Proficiency and Employability (2015) revealed that over four in five employers interviewed and three quarters of advertised online vacancies stated that English was the most useful language for the jobs discussed in all sectors and in almost all non-English speaking countries.
But, even if many VET providers offer English language courses, that critical skill on the job market is not mastered by all learners. Therefore this need in training from many European learners has allowed the development, in the last years, of a large amount of mobile learning apps and programs, certain meeting quite a big success such as Duolingo or Babbel.

Their success is not surprising considering that learning of a language is indeed adapted to mobile learning as it uses frequent and small lesson, allowing the learner to integrate a new vocabulary at a good pace but those commercial apps are somehow elitists. First most of them rely on monthly payment or subscription (10€/month for Babbel for instance) but even when they do not (such as Duolingo), the elitism problem with such program is that they leave the learner alone to face difficulties: they do not provide explanation and only a scares support. Therefore the students that are gifted or know where to find such support can do well using such tools but for the vast percentage of others (most of the regular learners, learners with learning disorders, socially disadvantaged learners) the tool is ineffective and results in them giving up and in discouragement on their own capacity to learn a foreign language.

The tool is nonetheless useful is used within a frame where students receive the proper support, even more if that system can guarantee the certification of the learning process.

Such tool can now be created by schools without a large investment thanks to the democratization of chatbot. The chatbots are computer programs using Artificial Intelligence (AI) which can conduct conversation. Their usage has increased enormously in the last 8 years with the internet of things but also with the integration on massive messaging platform such as Facebook Messenger or WeChat.

As they are conversational agents and can be used on mobile phones, they are very easy to use for youngsters and virtually anybody else and have a great potential as an educative tool as they have all the tools needed for teaching pieces of information, evaluating whether learners understand the information given and send feedback to teachers to help them understand what learners understand best and where they have more difficulties, so teachers can adapt their classes for a better group and individual progress.

Based on this NEED (transnational lack of English skills to fill the need of the job market) of our TARGET GROUP (European learners in general, VET learners in particular) and on the CONTEXT (development of the possibilities of technologies, AT and mobile learning + the barriers of the commercial solutions), this projects had the OBJECTIVE to create a chatbot and supporting material for trainers to be used in the VET sector in order to provide an innovative tool for supporting the learning process of the students in the English language, whether in individual setting or in accompanied learning and in fine to increase their level.

Following the creation process during the project, the objectives have been raised and led to the completion of the following OER:

– a booklet on the possible uses of chatbots in education,
– dynamic Enligsh teaching content (for CEFR levels A2 and B1),
– the creation of 2 teaching chatbots Mr Winston (A2) and Mrs Winston (B1) accessible on Facebook Messenger
– their transposition and adaptation on a chatbot platform Tutorbot
– support lessons (for CEFR levels A2 and B1),
– a pedagogical guide on how to use and integrate the chatbot into teaching practice,
– a chatbot design guide to support the development of other chatbots by education professionals.

Project Website

http://mrwinstonchatbot.eu/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 272602 Eur

Project Coordinator

SCS LogoPsyCom & Country: BE

Project Partners

• Eurospeak Language Schools Ltd
• LJUDSKA UNIVERZA, ZAVOD ZA IZOBRAZEVANJE IN KULTURO, ROGASKA SLATINA
• Learnmera Oy
• YuzuPulse
• Civiform società cooperativa sociale