TY - JOUR
T1 - A preliminary study of VR English training material for personnel in the tourism industry
AU - Takada, Kazumine
AU - Murakami, Kayoko H.
AU - Yamazaki, Atsuko
AU - Yamanaka, Tsukasa
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to express our gratitude to Ms. Nakamura at APA Hotel Saitama Shintoshineki Kita, Ms. Tajima and Ms. Kidokoro at Keio Plaza Hotel Tokyo, Mr. Yamamoto at Casaliz Inc., and OTC Inc.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - As the COVID-19 pandemic settles, foreign visitors to Japan are expected to outnumber inbound tourists number before the pandemic. However, a shortage of personnel with proper English skills demands English training programs for hospitality service personnel in the tourism industry. In this study, the authors developed a prototype of a virtual reality (VR) training material for hospitality service personnel to practice and experience tough communication scenarios in English. The material's impacts were explored by monitoring changes in frontal brain hemoglobin concentration and heart rates of subjects who engaged in VR training and conversation sessions with an English conversation trainer. The measurements of the physiological data obtained from the subjects before and after they underwent VR training showed that the subjects tended to be more relaxed when they responded to difficult English conversations after the training. The results show that VR training materials can reduce the anxiety of hospitality service personnel who must engage in English communication at a hotel front or a restaurant, and this type of learning material is expected to be effectively used in the tourism industry from the perspective of employee education.
AB - As the COVID-19 pandemic settles, foreign visitors to Japan are expected to outnumber inbound tourists number before the pandemic. However, a shortage of personnel with proper English skills demands English training programs for hospitality service personnel in the tourism industry. In this study, the authors developed a prototype of a virtual reality (VR) training material for hospitality service personnel to practice and experience tough communication scenarios in English. The material's impacts were explored by monitoring changes in frontal brain hemoglobin concentration and heart rates of subjects who engaged in VR training and conversation sessions with an English conversation trainer. The measurements of the physiological data obtained from the subjects before and after they underwent VR training showed that the subjects tended to be more relaxed when they responded to difficult English conversations after the training. The results show that VR training materials can reduce the anxiety of hospitality service personnel who must engage in English communication at a hotel front or a restaurant, and this type of learning material is expected to be effectively used in the tourism industry from the perspective of employee education.
KW - English training
KW - NIRS
KW - tourism personnel
KW - VR
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85143314687&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1016/j.procs.2022.09.432
DO - 10.1016/j.procs.2022.09.432
M3 - Conference article
AN - SCOPUS:85143314687
SN - 1877-0509
VL - 207
SP - 3715
EP - 3723
JO - Procedia Computer Science
JF - Procedia Computer Science
T2 - 26th International Conference on Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems, KES 2022
Y2 - 7 September 2022 through 9 September 2022
ER -