INQUIRY LEARNING WITH A SOCIAL ROBOT: CAN YOU EXPLAIN THAT TO ME? Frances Wijnen Vicky Charisi Daniel Davison Jan van der Meij Dennis Reidsma Vanessa Evers
What we found Children verbalize their thoughts and ideas more easily with a social robot compared with a tablet.
Why this is important Self-explaining vs. interactive explaining Construction of knowledge What is the effect of a social robot on explanatory behaviour of children compared to a tablet?
Why we did this study EASEL project We are interested in human-robot symbiotic interaction. The context for this project is education and learning
What we did Inquiry learning task with a balance beam - Prepare - Hypothesis generation - Experimentation - Observation - Concluding University Today, 2010
Set-up Two conditions: - RoboKind Zeno R25 + tablet - Nexus tablet Assignment, questions, and suggestions were the same in both conditions Wording of the assignment, questions and suggestions
Participants 12 participants (4 female) Average age 8.8 years Robot condition N=6, tablet condition N=6
Video analysis ELAN program Video recordings were annotated using three levels: 1. Verbalization (child provides explanation) 2. System speech: - Giving explanation - Asking question - Waiting for response 3. Child actions: - Interacting with balance - Pressing button
Results Duration of verbalizationWaiting for response Robot Condition5.80 (SD=4.94)0.94 (SD=1.14) Tablet condition4.32 (SD=3.09)2.00 (SD=3.67) Non-significant difference t=1.264 (df=10), p=.118 Significant difference t=-2.54 (df=10), p= annotations for verbalization 146 annotations for waiting for response
Conclusions Verbalization differed non-significantly between conditions Waiting for response differed significantly between conditions
What’s next? Repeat this study with more participants to improve external validity Development of explaining during experiment Qualitative analysis
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