Learning in Summer Camp with Social Robots: A Morphological Study
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Learning in Summer Camp with Social Robots: A Morphological Study Leigh Levinson1 · Omer Gvirsman2 · Iris Melamed Gorodesky3 · Almogit Perez3 · Einat Gonen3 Goren Gordon2
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Accepted: 30 July 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Social robots are gradually being integrated into the educational system. However, in extracurricular settings, such as summer day camps, educational robots are usually incorporated for the purpose of teaching STEM-related material. We study the effects of a novel, easy-to-use and scalable robotic platform on integration of social robots into summer camps. To this end, we compare the ability of two very different robot morphologies, namely, the novel, noncommercial, 3D-printed, puppetlike and low-cost Patricc and the commonly used humanoid, hard-exterior, high-cost and sophisticated Nao, to deliver word morphology-related activities to groups of up to 9 children over the span of a three-week session of a summer day camp. We present both quantitative results and qualitative insights into the integration process. Our results show that the children’s impressive learning outcomes were not affected by which robotic platform they interacted with. This suggests that educational summer-camp activities for young children with social robots can be effective, regardless of the morphology of the robot. Keywords Language education · Child–robot interaction · Group interaction · Hebrew language morphology · Social robots
1 Introduction Educational robots are often used in the educational system as tools to teach Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) skills [23,53]. They are built and programmed for the sake of learning computer science and engineering curriculum. On the other hand, social robots’ goals lie in the social domain, wherein their interaction with humans is the focus of their programming and function [6,12]. Their potential contribution in the field of education might be especially large; taking into consideration the financial limitation in the field of education, the goal of teaching in a more personal manner through small groups and the desire
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Goren Gordon [email protected] Einat Gonen [email protected]
1
Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, CA, US
2
Curiosity Lab, Department of Industrial Engineering, Tel-Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
3
Department of Hebrew language and Semitic languages, Tel-Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
for new, innovative learning methods accelerate the development of educational robots. Social robot tutors have been incorporated into the educational system in different settings [24,30,58], but the use of robotics in extracurricular settings has focused primarily on STEM education [8,32,35,53,59]. Summer day camps that incorporate robotics are becoming more popular but generally do not use social robots for teaching non-STEM-related material [35,53]. More often, social robots have been used as companions in camps, such as for children with ASD to aid in the child’s development of social and v
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