Podcastin transkriptio KiVi-kasvot #6: AI in language learning

6. AI in language learning 

Henri: Welcome to the KiVi-kasvot podcast series. My name is Henri Annala and I work as a senior lecturer of English at TAMK. And I'm your host for this podcast series. The term KiVi comes from the Finnish words kielet and viestintä, which mean languages and communication. And in this podcast series, we'll get to know some of TAMK's language and communication teachers, learn about their work, and hear their thoughts on various topics related to language and communication teaching and learning, as well as teaching in a university of applied sciences more generally. In each episode, we'll begin by exploring our guest's personal story and getting to know them as a person. After that, we'll dive deeper into the episode's main theme, which naturally varies depending on the guest and the topic. And ladies and gentlemen, today we make history. We're going to have our very first episode in English, as you probably noticed by now. Our guest today is Emmanuel Abruquah, but friends call you Nana. A very warm welcome, Nana. 

Nana: Thank you very much. I'm pleased to be here. 

Henri: Nice to hear. So let's start by getting acquainted. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself? So who is Nana? 

Nana: Right. My name is Emmanuel Abruquah. And as the name goes, my first name, Emmanuel, comes from a Christian background, meaning that when we are baptized, we are given Christian names. But the name that my parents gave me as a traditional name is Nana. And that's why I'm known as Nana. I like to be called Nana. But on all the documents, it's Emmanuel Abruquah. 

Henri: Yes. So how did you end up working at TAMK? And what has your career journey been like? 

Nana: Right. I have been in Finland for over 30 years. During this time, I've been teaching and studying. My background is as a business teacher. I have been teaching business and business communication. To top up my education, when I came to Finland I studied Finnish pedagogy, and my interest was to be a university lecturer, or a business lecturer in that case. And so I did my teacher training internship here at TAMK, in the environmental engineering department. I got to know Ann Seppänen, who was my mentor at the time, and we developed some teaching methodology together. At that time, she was in charge of teaching academic report writing. So we thought that writing reports would be useful, say, when students have used their work from other courses, reproducing it academically. And this, I think, went quite well. Then I finished my internship here, and five years after that, I got a call: "Hey, can you come and take over?" And that's what brought me here. 

Henri: Great. So, you talked about being here in Finland for 30 years, or over 30 years. Where did you come to Finland from? 

Nana: I come from Ghana directly. My father was a head teacher, and he was also my mentor in all these things. During my university education in Ghana, I got a scholarship to study abroad, and the only place I thought about was Finland, because I wanted to see the Eskimos and the sledge dogs. Of course, we also learned about the extreme climate, extreme weather, so that was also quite interesting. And of course, I first landed in Ylivieska, which you might have heard of, and Ylivieska is one of the coldest places in Finland. So, yeah. 

Henri: Yeah. Sorry, I was laughing about when you talked about Eskimos, because I remember I heard once that there was a reporter on the streets in the USA, I think, and they were asking what Finland brings to mind, what their conceptions of Finland were. And they mentioned polar bears and Eskimos and penguins and whatnot. 

Nana: Yeah. But this tells you about our curriculum, what we study in geography. We study some of the things that are not actually useful in Ghana, but we study the geography of other climates, other countries, and so on. 

Henri: But talking about your work at TAMK, if there is such a thing as a typical work week, and I know that there isn't, how would that look for you? What does your work at TAMK include at the moment? 

Nana: At the moment, I'm a lecturer, a senior lecturer as well, in English. My daily routine is coming to work, preparing for lessons, developing ideas pedagogically, and also writing articles, making contact with partners that I've met at conferences, or discussing possibilities of joint courses, and so on. That kind of activity, apart from teaching, developing courses, is quite rewarding to me. And developing new ideas, working with artificial intelligence, creating new ideas for teaching and so on, really occupies my days nowadays. 

Henri: Yeah. I know that you have a lot going on in international collaboration, because I'm sitting right next to you. We're sitting in the same office with Nana, so I know a lot about his work and also about AI. You're constantly experimenting with new things, so it's very interesting. And I think that we also kind of share areas of interest in our work, in a way. But before going to AI, which is actually going to be our topic for today, let's talk a bit about teaching professional language skills, because that is what we both do as our daily job: teaching professional English. Of course, most people listening to this podcast have a fairly good understanding of language teaching, because they have gone through primary school, secondary school, whatever. They have some experiences of what language teaching looks like. But how does teaching professional language skills differ from that? And what does it look like today, thinking about your own context, which is the professional English courses? 

Nana: Right. This is actually quite an interesting topic to discuss, because language learning seems to have taken a different route because of AI. But in actual fact, the old basic way of learning professional language is still valid and still important. Engaging students in oral discussions and authentic situations is, in my opinion, the way professional language learning should be: engaging students in professional settings and oral discussions, and in understanding the basic concept of communication, putting your message across, and making sure that your customers and your clients understand clearly what you mean. 

Henri: So would you say that the focus is more on communication as opposed to, let's say, grammar or vocabulary? Is it mostly communication? 

Nana: Definitely. I think in the current world affairs, putting your point across, or making your point understood, is the main thing. In that case, grammar does not play a major role in making sure your point is clear enough. Yes, readability and understanding different concepts also play a key role. And that means that knowing how to use grammatically structured sentences is also very important. But in the end, it is communication: verbal, nonverbal, all the means possible that you can use in making sure your point is clear and understood. 

Henri: Yes, good. So now I think we could move on to today's main topic, which is AI in language learning. As I mentioned before, I know that you've worked a lot with AI and experimented with different things quite a bit. But one of the things you've been working on recently is something called the Human in the Loop communication framework. Could you tell me a little bit about that? What is it, and why did you develop it? 

Nana: Right. The framework is simply preparation, communication, interaction and validation, meaning revision, reviewing what you have done, or reflecting on what you've done. Currently, AI can produce good work, perfectly good work. And the difference is: how would the teacher know that learning has taken place in this process? So my concern is not simply the use of AI. It is the gap that it creates in understanding and the result that it produces. 

Henri: So is it basically a tool for the students, or for teachers as well? 

Nana: I think it's a tool, a friend, like some things. I was going to say somebody, but it's a tool. It's a friend that you can brainstorm with, you can learn with, you can ask questions. For example, if you find a word that you don't know, you can say, "Hey, I just found this word, production. What does it actually mean?" Just like that, just talking, like talking to a friend, and then it will explain to you. All right. But then you can ask, "Why did you use this particular word instead of this and that?" And it will explain to you. So you make sure that you communicate, you have a conversation with this tool. Okay, let's agree that it's a tool. This tool will help you to learn rather than just absorbing and reproducing. Yeah. 

Henri: So I think the concern that you talked about is: now in the era of AI, the students obviously use AI a lot, but how do you make sure that there's actually learning happening? So this is responding to that problem, right? 

Nana: Exactly. That is the validation of what they have submitted. 

Henri: And you mentioned this communication as human validation. What does that mean? 

Nana: Okay. It means creating a purposeful moment in which students must make their understanding visible to others. They may explain, they respond to questions, and then of course they interact with the audience in whatever they present to them. So it can take just two minutes of interaction, even between the teacher and the student, or it can be a public presentation where the public would engage by asking questions about what the subject is all about. So it's all about validating the knowledge that the students have produced. 

Henri: So is this basically an oral examination, in a way? 

Nana: No, not at all. Not at all. I don't think this is changing the way we evaluate or assess students' oral skills. No. It can include short conversations, presentations, demonstrations, role plays, peer discussions, client briefings, and so on. Very, very simple. And it can be applied to different fields of study, not only in academic writing or blog writing and so on. It's applicable to different places and different disciplines. 

Henri: So could you give a practical example of how this has been used? I think you've probably tried it with students. 

Nana: Yes. Over the years, students have been writing blog posts. Out of the blog posts, we have public presentations, online public presentations, where students invite their parents and their loved ones to come and listen to them. And of course, we allow one or two questions from the audience, but we also have opponents allocated to them. The opponents pre-read the students' work before the presentations, and they say one or two good things about the presentation, and then name developmental areas that need to be fixed, and so on. Then they ask specific questions related to the blog post. And this opponent system actually checks whether the students have understood what they have presented in the blog post. So this is a typical example, and this is where all this started. And when AI showed up, I thought, okay, now we can experiment: we write a blog post with the help of AI, brainstorming ideas, structuring it, and eventually producing a readable, understandable text for the public. And then we had our usual online seminar to present this to the public. 

Henri: That sounds like a really, really nice idea. And I'm a big fan of connecting our studies and what the students do with the real world out there. As you said, these presentations are public, so you can invite your relatives or loved ones, and they can come in and listen. And I think that's a brilliant idea. I've also done some things with public blogs, so that there's sometimes discussion going on where people from different places in the world have started commenting on the posts, and there's really interesting discussion going on with people who are not in that particular course. And of course, the internet has opened up a lot of possibilities for us to do things like that. This is by no means a new idea, but I think still not enough teachers are doing it, are taking advantage of the possibilities that it provides us with. 

Nana: Yeah, I think some teachers have, but it is slow. We need to create awareness of the possibilities of incorporating the use of AI into our teaching and learning, and help the students, teachers and colleagues to be able to adapt. It's not going to change. The companies are full steam ahead, and we need to be able to produce students who are capable, able and skillful, so to say, in using artificial intelligence at work. 

Henri: So what if the students experience anxiety, or if they have accessibility-related needs? Is this suitable for them as well? 

Nana: Yes, it is. It's not time bound, with a specific period in which the students should be there. No, you can really ask the students a few questions, one minute, two minutes, and engage the students to answer basic questions about the work that the student has done. Nothing intimidating in this case. It's not time bound, so that everybody has to present in public. No, it's applicable to everyone and adaptive to different students' situations. 

Henri: Well then, changing the perspective a bit. If you're a teacher listening to this, you know that we don't have a lot of resources these days, and every year it seems that we have less than in the previous year. So is this framework a tool that teachers can use without creating a big workload for themselves? 

Nana: Absolutely. This is actually one of the reasons why this framework works in such a way. Let's say you have 45 students submitting academic reports, for instance. Reading through all of them and giving them responsible grades could be time-consuming. So to ensure understanding, and even easy reading for the teacher, cross-checking through the presentations, the oral aspect of it, validates the knowledge that the student has gained from producing the academic texts, for instance. And so I don't think this will increase the workload substantially. 

Henri: So how have you done it? Is it basically so that you as a teacher only check the oral part, or do you also look at the written part? How does it work? 

Nana: I'll give you an example. I had a student who had submitted a paper for grading, and I invited the student to my office and asked, "Could you tell me what the topic of your essay is?" And he could not say it. And I said, "Okay, that's fine. Just take five minutes, go through it, and tell me what your essay is about." And the person couldn't tell me. So it was a perfect piece of academic text, but he had not written it himself, and he hadn't even read through it. So this is one of the examples of how this Human in the Loop communication framework supports evaluation. 

Henri: Yeah, I do think that in the era of AI, introducing an oral component is really one of the most effective ways of making sure that the student has done the work themselves and knows what they're talking about. Now, we've been talking about this framework, and if there are listeners who would like to try it, how should they proceed? What should they try first? 

Nana: I think just choose one important assignment, for instance, and add a few questions to it. Let the students do the assignment, and then ask a very simple question, like, "Why did you choose this approach?" And let the student answer the question. Or you can say, "How would you adapt this to another context, to a different audience?" Or "What would you change if the situation were different?" This ensures that the student has done some work and understands the content of it. So it's a very, very simple assignment, with basic questions, not even detailed. 

Henri: Thank you. So is there any information about this online, any publication, if somebody is interested in learning more about this? Have you published anything on this? 

Nana: Yes, I think I have published about three different articles, and the last one is actually a scientific article which is being published in Digital Horizon. This was requested after a seminar presentation in Hungary. But I have written a lot about this. The first publication was about communicating with the outside world, and that took the pedagogical approach of how the students were guided to write blog posts and then give public presentations. So the idea is how professionals communicate difficult subjects to the public. 

Henri: Okay, so I think we can add links to these publications in the episode description, so you can just check them from there. But thanks, Nana, for this interesting discussion. We are slowly running out of time, so we're starting to wrap up this episode. Today we've talked, first of all, a bit about teaching professional language skills, and about AI and language learning, more specifically the Human in the Loop communication framework. If I ask you to summarize your message to our listeners today in a single sentence, what would it be? 

Nana: I would say embrace AI carefully and also use it ethically. 

Henri: Nice. We're going to do just that. So a warm thank you to Nana Abruquah for joining us, and thanks to all of our listeners for staying with us. And hopefully you'll tune in to our next episode as well, and the previous ones too.