Virtual Ryugaku: measuring iconicity in VR in relation to language acquisition and cross-cultural communication
| Project/Area Number |
21K00778
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Multi-year Fund |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Review Section |
Basic Section 02100:Foreign language education-related
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| Research Institution | Hakodate National College of Technology |
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Principal Investigator |
taquet david 函館工業高等専門学校, 一般系, 准教授 (50710901)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
小野 真嗣 室蘭工業大学, 大学院工学研究科, 准教授 (10369902)
オレクサ ロバート 函館工業高等専門学校, 一般人文系, 准教授 (40803713)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2021-04-01 – 2025-03-31
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| Project Status |
Granted (Fiscal Year 2023)
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| Budget Amount *help |
¥3,900,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,000,000、Indirect Cost: ¥900,000)
Fiscal Year 2023: ¥1,040,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000、Indirect Cost: ¥240,000)
Fiscal Year 2022: ¥780,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000、Indirect Cost: ¥180,000)
Fiscal Year 2021: ¥2,080,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,600,000、Indirect Cost: ¥480,000)
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| Keywords | Virtual Reality / Iconicity / Language / Education technology / 多文化コミュニケーション |
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| Outline of Research at the Start |
The availability of 6DOF and enhanced hand tracking provides an unprecedented opportunity to document the form-meaning mapping at the intersection of body movement and spoken language. What we call “Virtual Ryugaku” refers to creating the opportunity for students to participate in cross-cultural experiences inside of virtual worlds. By documenting and analyzing the data from this interaction, we hope to gain insight into EFL acquisition and also break ground on what is potentially an innovative solution for overcoming the modern restraints students face when looking to study abroad.
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
Our research had lead us to unexpected results and paths. First, we have realized the potential of VR as a community outreach tool. Indeed through various workshops organized at our school, we invited junior highschool students and introduced them to VR and some potential applications for language learning. Through VR, the students were able to overcome natural shyness and practice conversation using natural gestures in a virtual environment. Also, following a conference presentation in France in 2022, where the principal investigator compares and contrasts various uses of spaces as an intertextual tool in youth litterature, we were invited to submit the article for publication. The article is currently being edited.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
4: Progress in research has been delayed.
Reason
Despite actively trying to recruit students to participate in our study, and developing easy-to-access questionnaire, we are encountering many difficulties recruiting willing students. Also, with a change in the network security policies at our school, it is now necessary to obtain special authorisations to access internet with the virtual reality headsets. Finally, a bug that was introduced in V62 of the Quest 2 and 3 devices have made internet connections even more unstable.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
Once we have managed and overcome the technical difficulties (network connection and stability), we will continue recruiting students. We will try more actively to interest students in joining the study by holding schoool-wide vent to demonstrate all that can achieved in the field of language learning through Virtual Reality. Also, we are now discussing collaboration with a professor of our institute to use his AI based pose recognition app which utilizes tensor flow and posenet/movenet to detect 17 different points on the body. This is something we have been trying to accomplish since 2022, when we went to Sojo University in Kumamoto and presened at SUTLF 2023. we plan on presenting data and results from this collaboration at KOTESOL2024 in October 2024
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Report
(3 results)
Research Products
(11 results)
