Analysis of Communication Skills by Repeated Reflections on Group Discussions for First- and Second-Year University Students

Abstract

A reflection after discussion by participants is expected to enhance their discussion skills. In our previous work, we proposed to improve novice students' discussion skills using repeated discussion-and-reflection sequences. In this paper, we investigated how the students improved their discussion skills through long-term experiments. Participants were four novice students who were not familiar with each other at the first session. Experimental discussions using an online video meeting system were repeated ten times during three months in 2021. The discussions were conducted with the same students. In our analysis, students tried to increase the number of utterances and continue a talk by observing others' behaviors. Our study will provide an effective method to improve student discussion skills, and support to develop an advice system for students' behaviors in discussion.