Background. The role-play for pharmacological education (RPPE) provides a practical training focused on the basis of drug therapy. Learning achievement in RPPE, however, has not been researched precisely. In this study, we assessed the learning achievement in RPPE by using a self-assessment rubric.

Methods. Participants: Fourth grade medical students at Tohoku Medical and Pharmaceutical University who took the online RPPE (oRPPE) in 2022. Measurements: Self-assessment rubric was presented to participants on the first day of the course. Four following categories were scored on a five-point scale: I) Understanding: a. health problems of the case in charge; b. drug therapy of the case in charge; c. role-play performed by the others, II) Preparation, III) Performance and IV) Discussion and dialogue. Students were directed to assess themselves during preparation and performance of oRPPE. Data collection and analysis: Scores were collected after course completion. All data are presented as the mean ± standard error of the mean (S.E.M.).

Results. The self-assessment showed high scores in the following 3 categories: I) Understanding (a. 4.10 ± 0.06; b. 4.10 ± 0.06; c. 3.94 ± 0.07), II) Preparation (4.32 ± 0.06) and III) Performance (4.21 ± 0.07). These results indicate that RPPE could provide basic practice for drug therapy. It also implies that specification of expected outcomes through rubric beforehand might be useful to guide self- and peer-learning during preparation and performance. On the other hand, the score in IV) Discussion and

(.75 ± 0.09) might reflect difficulties to discuss the whole process of clinical practice in each case, which requires advanced professional competencies.

Conclusion. The self-assessment rubric is a useful tool for assessing achievement of learning in RPPE.

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In this paper we propose a method for generating simple but semantically correct replies to user inputs which are not related to a given task of a task-oriented information kiosk or any other natural language interface placed in a public place. We describe our method for retrieving meaningful associations from the Web and adding modality based on chatlog data. After showing the results of the evaluation experiments, we introduce an implementation of an affect analysis algorithm and pun generator to increase users' satisfaction level.

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Researchers have demonstrated that shadowing is effective in enhancing the memorization of multiword units (MWUs) in a second language. Two explanations have been offered regarding the underlying mechanism of its effect: either shadowing improves repetition speed, leading to better memorization of MWUs, or shadowing alone enhances the memorization of MWUs, subsequently boosting repetition speed. However, neither of these explanations has been empirically validated. To address this conflict, the present study conducted a shadowing training program spanning 11 classes involving 72 Japanese undergraduate students. This study employed a sorting test and a reading-aloud test to measure the effects of shadowing. Logistic and linear mixed-effects modeling indicated that the improvement in repetition speed facilitated the memorization of MWUs, whereas the reverse process did not hold true. These findings directly validate for the first time a theoretical foundation of the effect of shadowing on the memorization of MWUs.

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In this paper we propose a method for generating simple but semantically correct replies to user inputs which are not related to a given task of a task-oriented information kiosk or any other natural language interface placed in a public place. We describe our method for retrieving meaningful associations from the Web and adding modality based on chatlog data. After showing the results of the evaluation experiments, we introduce an implementation of an affect analysis algorithm and pun generator to increase users' satisfaction level.

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This study focuses on the effectiveness of using the group dialog technique World Cafe in Post-Guidance for the nursery training segment of teacher education. There ware 106 participants, all of them Japanese junior collegestudents.Our World Cafe consisted of three sessions of progressive conversation lasting approximately thirty minuteseach, followed by a reflection among the whole group. When all participants were seated, they explained thepurpose and the logistics of the Cafe. They were told that the would be moving from table to table and that the endof a session may come when they were in the middle of an intense conversation. They explained that when asession ended, one person would remain behind as the host of that table, and the other people will move to newtables to sit with a different mix of people. Participants wrote or drew ideas on paper table cloths, enabling other Cafeparticipants literally to "see" what they mean.Before and after World Cafe, we conducted participant questionnaires about the scale of their reflection ofteaching practice in nursery, pre-school teacher efficacy, positive and negative feelings. Answers concerning preschoolteacher efficacy, positive feelings, negative feelings were analyzed by Paired t-test. Analysis showed thatparticipants became more consciously reflective of their nursery training and they had a positive impression ofWorld Cafe. The implication of this study was that students understand and assimilate more extensively aboutnursery care and education through effective dialogue, which gives full play to their reflections.

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The crucial role of nonverbal communication by gaze in social interactions has been highlighted. In this study, an eye robot having two degrees-of-freedom was developed as a communication robot, and the motion of the sight line of this robot in a standby state with an absence of communication with people was investigated. We compared and evaluated the impression provided by a robot and a person, who imitated the action of the robot, to observers and demonstrated that both the robot and person provided improved impression if the line of sight is stationary.

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In this international age, the ability to speak English is more important than ever. Driven by the necessity of teaching speaking in large classes, I examined the mechanism of speaking and compared the advantages and disadvantages of both speaking and writing in learning languages, noticing the possibility of using writing as a substitute activity for speaking. This paper introduces the idea of using writing to assist in the teaching of speaking and includes an outline of the lesson curriculum of an experimental study and its results, which lead us to believe that writing can be used to help students improve their speaking ability.

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Lip syncing is an important technology that enhances the impression of embodied conversational agents. However, there is no study to design the mouth movement of the agent when the agent is silent. Therefore, this paper investigated how human speakers move their mouths when silent in dialogues. As a result, we found three facts. First, a speaker does not completely close mouth even when listening to a partner's talk. Second, the degree of mouth opening while talking and listening greatly depends on the speaker. Third, the mouth opening is possibly affected by the next state of the speaker.

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In listening, learners must turn to both bottom-up and top-down strategies in order to successfully parse the acoustic signals and segment the speech into individual words. However, topdown strategies are sometimes less fully utilized, especially by the listeners with lower levels of proficiency. In the present study, it is examined if providing the learners with semantic and contextual hints before listening would help activate their top-down strategies, thereby enhancing their word recognition. In the experiment, only the participants in the experimental group were given Japanese translations before dictation practices and instructed to guess on the text they would soon hear. The results showed that the participants in the experimental group fared better in the posttest even without the scaffolding of semantic and contextual cues than those in the control groups. In particular, their recognition of function words was significantly improved, which was presumably caused by their reference to contextual, semantic, and linguistic knowledge.

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This study investigates which of the Gricean sub-maxims is flouted when manage to-infinitive implicates humor or irony. Conventionally, the target to-infinitive describes that someone has strived to accomplish something to the benefit or credit of him or herself. However, humor or irony is implied when a conventional interpretation would lead to a contradiction; e.g. “Mike managed to upset his mother yet again today. (humorous)” (MED 2002: 855) and “He managed to muddle it (irony)” (COD 1976: 739). The implicature of humor or irony is created when the target to-infinitive describes a situation where a disadvantage or discredit to the person concerned is implied. Ten native speakers of English (henceforth, NSEs) were surveyed to verify the lexicographic explanations. Although the NSEs‟ interpretations of the samples varied, humor or irony was usually found to be invoked when the target structure was used. The conclusions are that flouting the sub-maxims “Do not say what you believe to be false” (Grice 1975: 45) and “Avoid obscurity of expression” (Grice 1975: 45) results in implied humor or irony. This study proposes that the target structure can impose an element of indirectness so that the people who are referred to can save face (Brown and Levinson 1987).

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In this study, we generate dialogue contents in which two systems discuss their distress with each other. The user inputs sentences that include environment and feelings of distress. The system generates the dialogue content from the input. In this study, we created dialogue data about distress in order to generate them using deep learning. The generative model fine-tunes the GPT of the pre-trained model using the TransferTransfo method. The contribution of this study is the creation of a conversational dataset using publicly available data. This study used EmpatheticDialogues, an existing empathetic dialogue dataset, and Reddit r/offmychest, a public data set of distress. The models fine-tuned with each data were evaluated both automatically (such as by the BLEU and ROUGE scores) and manually (such as by relevance and empathy) by human assessors.

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It is desirable to use assistive robots to support daily tasks performed by humans. In this study, we conducted a routine patrol to manipulate and transport objects such as garbage disposal. By coordinating multiple robots with different characteristics, it is possible to perform long daily patrols, object manipulation, and transportation, which are challenges in performing such patrols. By using voice for the task handover process between robots, we were able to build a system that is robust against failures due to human intervention, as well as scalable to adapt to new robots by simply starting the task with voice commands.

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“Value co-creation” among actors related to service provision is one of the key concepts in service design. Living Lab (LL) is a co-creative service design methodology in which designers and users collaboratively design services. In LL, users are actively involved in service design processes over long periods. Because LL is a design methodology based on long-term co-creation with users, its practices involve more direct and indirect communication and collaboration with users than typical service design does. Therefore, in order to make value co-creation successful in LL projects, it is crucial for designers to use not only knowledge of service design methods, but also practical know-how related to “facilitating long-term co-creation with users.” Such know-how is not always shared, however, among LL practitioners, because it is often buried in their experiences. Thus, LL practice currently places heavy reliance on the practitioners’ intuition and experience. Therefore, to support LL practitioners, it is essential to extract key know-how on how to achieve successful LL projects from experienced practitioners, and to describe such know-how. This would allow us to share and reuse know-how in planning and running an LL project. Hence, the purpose of this study is to extract such key know-how for LL practice and describe it in an easy-to-reuse manner. We first developed a workshop to extract key know-how for LL practice. In this study, we held the workshop twice and could extract 30 items of key know-how. Subsequently, we described the extracted key know-how as “patterns” by using the pattern language framework, and we developed a booklet listing the 30 patterns in an easy-to-reuse manner. The booklet can be used by LL practitioners to refer to and reuse the key know-how for LL practice. Through an evaluation, we confirmed that the developed booklet is useful for LL practitioners for referring to and using LL know-how.

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With the current enthusiasm and energy for study abroad and campus internationalization, US universities are in a strong position to fulfill their goals as stated in various mission statements and formal addresses. Statements that promise leadership in diverse and dynamic global economies, internationalized curricula, participation in more global learning opportunities both on campus and abroad, and calls to investigate current issues in contemporary civilization and ideological differences that separate peoples of the world are often ideal, but in reality are used mainly for marketing purposes. While it is true that students benefit from cross-cultural and linguistic exchanges, they must also learn how to analyze the various underpinnings and ramifications of internationalization in an era of globalization. As our need to be multilateral, multilingual, multiperspectived and multicultural increases, so does our need to recognize the expertise of our faculty and our international colleagues and students, on campus and off. After all, the faculty provide the sustained educational environments in which students will begin to appreciate the complexity of global integration but also develop skills to navigate it successfully.

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The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, in its current Curriculum Standards for high school English, emphasizes the development of Japanese EFL learners’ attitudes towards cross-cultural understanding. The present research aims to provide insights to enhance learners’ interaction skills in fostering cross-cultural understanding. Drawing on prior findings on government-approved textbooks and learner-native speaker interaction, two studies were conducted: one on written dialogue models in textbooks and another on authentic spoken interactions where topics related to the interlocutors’ cultural backgrounds were discussed. Study One investigates the design of dialogues in textbooks. The results indicate that these dialogues often rely excessively on a question-answer pair format, causing them to appear as contrived, formal interviews based on simplified categories of nationalities. Study Two examines face-to-face, spontaneous conversations between Japanese EFL learners and native English speakers from the United Kingdom. The results reveal that while question-answer pairs are also prevalent in these naturally-occurring exchanges, learners tend to be less reactive when listening and less coherent or collaborative in topic management. These findings offer implications for the future development of teaching materials.

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