Abstract
We aim to create a more efficient online, or E-learning, environment that will promote participation and enhance the learning speed of foreign languages. The goal is to explore interests and features that can be incorporated in an educational platform which transitions users from a state of explicit learning to implicit learning. This method calls upon the study of intrinsic motivations and identification of needs for different target audiences. Our deliverable is a prototype application called “Chatty”, where users with unique personas can practice and improve foreign languages together. We turned typical practices for learning languages such as communicating with others, asking and answering questions, giving and receiving critical feedback, and participating in grammar activities into an enjoyable and meaningful gamified experience. Next, we measured the ergonomic design of the Chatty app through a user ability test based on the Goal, Question, Metric (GQM) model. By measuring the time to complete six unique tasks in Chatty, our sample study yields geometric means to complete each task within 50 s. The geometric mean is a meaningful measurement to predict the median population times to complete a task within Chatty; therefore, we find that our application is intuitive and efficient. Lastly, we tested our gamified environment’s ability to improve a user’s memory recall for new language material. With 95% confidence, our experiment results show that users who took a grammar test in Chatty’s gamified environment were better able to recall the tested material later on. This means that gamification shows promise for improving memory recall in users learning new languages. Though our app is aimed at the study of foreign languages, gamification can be applied to other various industries and future studies should be considered. Access to the prototype can be granted upon emailed request.
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Park, H., Burke, J.D., Blin, V., Chrysanthou, H. (2020). Improving Memory Recall and Measuring User Ability Through Gamified Techniques with ‘Chatty’: An E-Learning Application for Foreign Languages. In: Rau, PL. (eds) Cross-Cultural Design. Applications in Health, Learning, Communication, and Creativity. HCII 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12193. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49913-6_30
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