Humanizing Teaching through Digital-storytelling to Reinforcing Creative Problem-solving and Empathy with AI

Abstract

The role of AI-powered technology in language learning has revealed its benefits on leveraging different learning skills, such as writing, and speaking. The use of AI can engage learners in creative thinking based on imagination of the future. As AI has been widely used in writing, this study set out to explore how EFL students experience empathy through digital storytelling. In this paper, the researcher explored students’ perceptions of lesson instructions to develop their creative writing, focusing on their ability to demonstrate empathy and emotional intelligence through the completion of the story. In each lesson, students were instructed to read, and tell a story, and finally were assigned to project the future for two characters in a short film entitled ‘The Other Pair’, which they watched and discussed in class. The aim of the assignment is to explore the relationship between empathy and problem-solving. The researcher used students’ digital storytelling assignment for analysis and a questionnaire completed by 43 students to analyse both their perception of the speaking course, and their development of empathy-based creativity. The findings show that students shared a sense of future-related empathy for each character. This study has implications for theory and practice, as humanising the classroom by enhancing students’ creativity could develop empathy through the power of imagination and increase emotional intelligence. This study contributes to the literature of empathy that the use of AI tools can empower creative problem-solving skills.