Child–Robot Interaction in Education

Advances in the field of robotics in recent years have enabled the deployment of robots in a multitude of settings, and it is predicted that this will continue to increase, leading to a profound impact on society in the future. This thesis takes its starting point in educational robots; specifically the kind of robots that are designed to interact socially with children. Such robots are often modeled on humans, and made to express and/or perceive emotions, for the purpose of creating some social or emotional attachment in children. This thesis presents a research effort in which an empathic robotic tutor was developed and studied in a school setting, focusing on children’s interactions with the robot over time and across different educational scenarios. With support from the Responsible Research and Innovation Framework, this thesis furthermore sheds light on ethical dilemmas and the social desirability of implementing robots in future classrooms, seen from the eyes of teachers and students. The thesis concludes that children willingly follow instructions from a robotic tutor, and they may also develop a sense of connection with robots, treating them as social actors. However, children’s interactions with robots often break down in unconstrained classroom settings when expectations go unmet, making the potential gain of robots in education questionable. From an ethical perspective, there are many open questions regarding stakeholders’ concerns on matters of privacy, roles andresponsibility, as well as unintended consequences. These issues need to be dealt with when attempting to implement autonomous robots in education on a larger scale

Evaluation of an Empathic Robotic Tutor for Geography and Sustainability Learning

This paper discusses the evaluation of an empathic robotic tutor, developed in the EMOTE project. It also argues for the adoption of a new evaluation approach for educational robots, called situated evaluation

Robots Tutoring Children: Longitudinal Evaluation of Social Engagement in Child-Robot Interaction

This paper explores children’s social engagement to a robotic tutor by analyzing their behavioral reactions to socially significant events initiated by the robot. Specific questions addressed in this paper are whether children express signs of social engagement as a reaction to such events, and if so, in what way. The second question is whether these reactions differ between different types of social events, and finally, whether such reactions disappear or change over time. Our analysis indicates that children indeed show behaviors that indicate social engagement using a range of communicative channels. While gaze towards the robot’s face is the most common indication for all types of social events, verbal expressions and nods are especially common for questions, and smiles are most common after positive feedback. Although social responses in general decrease slightly over time, they are still observable after three sessions with the robot

Comparing a Humanoid Tutor to a Human Tutor Delivering an Instructional Task to Children

This paper presents a study that compares a humanoid robotic tutor to a human tutor when instructing school children to build a LEGO house. A total of 27 students, between the ages of 11-15, divided into two groups, participated in the study and data were collected to investigate the participants\u27 success rate, requests for help, engagement, and attitude change toward robots following the experiment. The results reveal that both groups are equally successful in executing the task. However, students ask the human tutor more often for help, while students working with the robotic tutor are more eager to perform well on the task. Finally, all students get a more positive attitude toward a robotic tutor following the experiment, but those in the robot condition change their attitude somewhat more for certain questions, illustrating the importance of real interaction experiences prior to eliciting students\u27 attitudes toward robots. The paper concludes that students do follow instructions from a robotic tutor but that more long-term interaction is necessary to study lasting effects

Potentials and challenges for user-generated video content in public libraries

The role of libraries are rapidly shifting, in large part as a consequence of digitization. In addition to providing access to collections of books and other physical media, public libraries today are embracing a new role of becoming urban hubs, in which a wide range of activities take place. In these activities, local knowledge is developed, exchanged, and disseminated. However, there are still very few digital services that support this new role. Here, we explore how to develop digital services for supporting and leveraging user-generated video content in library activities. Based on interviews and design scenarios as probes, we describe the potentials and challenges for designing such services, as seen from the perspective of library staff. Our insights will inform the design of a new digital service for publics to participate in collaborative production of videos to document, exchange, and disseminate local knowledge generated in library activities

Child–Robot Interaction: Social Bonding, Learning and Ethics

This workshop aims to exchange experiences with issues surrounding Child-Robot Interaction. More specifically, the main aims are to discuss how social bonding between children and robots can be evaluated, how robots can be used to aid children in their learning process, but also what ethical issues arise when children learn from and bond with a robot. Another aim is to discuss how teachers’ and caretakers’ perspectives on children’s use of robots should be taken into account when designing and evaluating robots for children

Teachers’ Views on the Use of Empathic Robotic Tutors in the Classroom

In this paper, we describe the results of an interview study conducted across several European countries on teachers’ views on the use of empathic robotic tutors in the classroom. The main goals of the study were to elicit teachers’ thoughts on the integration of the robotic tutors in the daily school practice, understanding the main roles that these robots could play and gather teachers’ main concerns about this type of technology. Teachers’ concerns were much related to the fairness of access to the technology, robustness of the robot in students’ hands and disruption of other classroom activities. They saw a role for the tutor in acting as an engaging tool for all, preferably in groups, and gathering information about students’ learning progress without taking over the teachers’ responsibility for the actual assessment. The implications of these results are discussed in relation to teacher acceptance of ubiquitous technologies in general and robots in particular

Hedges and Boosters in Academic Writing - A Study of Gender Differences in Essays Written by Swedish Advanced Learners of English.

The primary aim of this study was to investigate the overall frequency in which Swedish advanced learners of English use epistemic modality to express doubt (hedges) and certainty (boosters) in their academic writing; and if there seem to be gender-related differences. The secondary aim was to study how these modifiers were structurally distributed in the essays according to the IMRAD model. A comparative analysis of 20 randomly selected C-essays written by Swedish students of English at several universities was therefore conducted. Slight indications were found suggesting that females were more inclined than males to offer stronger commitments to the propositional information they supplied, but both males and females displayed a substantially higher use of hedges than boosters. Also, both hedges and boosters appeared more frequently in the Introduction and Discussion than the remaining sections of the academic essays.student essa

Breakdowns in children\u27s interactions with a robotic tutor: A longitudinal study

In recent years, there has been a growing research interest towards exploring the benefit of Child–Robot Interaction for educational purposes through the use of social robotics. Despite the label, such robots are typically only social within scripted activities. The current study takes a critical look at the case of a robotic tutor which was implemented in an elementary school for 3.5 months, where children repeatedly took turns interacting with the robot individually as well as in pairs. The aim of the study was to explore what caused breakdowns in children\u27s interactions with the robotic tutor. In this qualitative study, over 14 h of video recordings of children\u27s interaction sessions were analyzed in-depth through interaction analysis and thematic analysis. The results comprise four themes to explain why children\u27s interactions with the robotic tutor break down: (1) the robot\u27s inability to evoke initial engagement and identify misunderstandings, (2) confusing scaffolding, (3) lack of consistency and fairness, and finally, (4) controller problems. The implications of these breakdowns for the educational use of robots are discussed, and it is concluded that several challenges need to be rigorously addressed in order for robotic tutors to be able to feature in education

Audiovisual versus written input:A comparative study of the effects of video versus text on students’ short- and long-term memory at upper secondary school.

Denna studie har genomförts för att belysa skillnader i olika mediers roll för minnet och lärandet hos elever i gymnasieskolan. Syftet har varit att jämföra audiovisuell stimuli i form av utbildningsfilm med motsvarande information i skriftlig version utifrån ett kort- och långsiktigt perspektiv, då båda dessa medium används inom skolan utan några egentliga kunskaper kring deras för- och nackdelar. Två jämförande experiment med andra- och tredjeårselever på gymnasiet har genomförts där eleverna har indelats i olika testgrupper. Hälften av eleverna har vid experiment 1 sett på en utbildningsfilm, medan resterande har läst motsvarande information i skriven text. Därefter har ett omgående kunskapsprov med fasta svarsalternativ genomförts, följt av ett liknande prov tre veckor senare. Experiment 2 har konstruerats på samma sätt, men med annat material samt där testgrupperna har alternerat. Resultatet av studien visade att text och film inte skiljde sig åt utifrån ett kortsiktigt perspektiv. Däremot genererade film en mer positiv effekt på det långsiktiga minnet även om ett paired T-test inte kunde bekräfta signifikansen i denna slutsats. Vidare drogs slutsatsen att film är ett bättre alternativ än text om det saknas förkunskap. Dessa slutsatser bör betraktas som ett bidrag eller komplement till redan befintlig forskning på området, och det krävs betydligt fler studier och mer omfattande forskning för att bekräfta mina slutsatser om de ska betraktas som tillräckligt tillförlitliga i pedagogiska sammanhang. Min förhoppning är att detta kan belysa och uppmuntra till en medvetenhet vid valet av nya verktyg i lärares undervisning