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Engaging Learners in Dialogue Interactivity Development for Mobile Robots

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Educational Robotics in the Context of the Maker Movement (Edurobotics 2018)

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 946))

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Abstract

The use of robots in educational and STEM engagement activities is widespread. In this paper we describe a system developed for engaging learners with the design of dialogue-based interactivity for mobile robots. With an emphasis on a web-based solution that is grounded in both a real robot system and a real application domain – a museum guide robot – our intent is to enhance the benefits to both driving research through potential user-group engagement, and enhancing motivation by providing a real application context for the learners involved. The proposed system is designed to be highly scalable to both many simultaneous users and to users of different age groups, and specifically enables direct deployment of implemented systems onto both real and simulated robots. Our observations from preliminary events, involving both children and adults, support the view that the system is both usable and successful in supporting engagement with the dialogue interactivity problem presented to the participants, with indications that this engagement can persist over an extended period of time.

The work described in this paper was supported by the EU H2020 (“ILIAD”, contract 732737), EPSRC (“NCNR” Hub EP/R02572X/1), and the Johnson and Mukherjee Brothers Charitable Trust.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.thecollectionmuseum.com/.

  2. 2.

    https://scratch.mit.edu/.

  3. 3.

    https://developers.google.com/blockly/.

  4. 4.

    https://github.com/LCAS/robot-dialogflow/.

  5. 5.

    https://dialogflow.com/.

  6. 6.

    https://assistant.google.com/.

  7. 7.

    The worksheets may be found at the following: https://sites.google.com/view/uol-ai-robotics/materials.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lincoln Centre for Autonomous Systems, School of Computer Science, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK

    Paul Baxter, Francesco Del Duchetto & Marc Hanheide

Authors
  1. Paul Baxter
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  2. Francesco Del Duchetto
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  3. Marc Hanheide
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paul Baxter .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Engineering, University of Padua, Padua, Italy

    Michele Moro

  2. European Lab for Educational Technology, Edumotiva, Sparti, Greece

    Dimitris Alimisis

  3. Department of Computer Control and Management Engineering, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Rome, Roma, Italy

    Luca Iocchi

Appendix

Appendix

1.1 Child Learner Questionnaire Data

Questions asked of the children in the questionnaire (see Sect. 4.1) are as follows, with the mean responses (and s.d.) where appropriate (144 responses unless otherwise stated):

  1. (1)

    basic demographics (age, gender, school)

  2. (2)

    have you ever used real robots (no, yes at home, yes at school, yes somewhere else)

  3. (3)

    how do you feel about robots in general (5-point scale, 1: very positive, 5: very negative): 1.92 (0.98)

  4. (4)

    how would you feel about having a robot in the museum to help you? (5-point scale, 1: very positive, 5: very negative): 1.63 (0.92)

  5. (5)

    how would you feel about having a robot at school to help you? (5-point scale, 1: very positive, 5: very negative): 1.69 (1.2)

  6. (6)

    how would you feel about having a robot at home to help you? (5-point scale, 1: very positive, 5: very negative): 1.90 (1.32)

  7. (7)

    have you enjoyed the day today? (5-point scale, 1: yes very much, 5: not at all): 1.45 (0.84)

  8. (8)

    have you ever been to the Collection Museum (in Lincoln) before? (yes/no): 27.8% yes

    Keyword analysis was applied to responses of the free-text questions (below): a simple frequency count was employed, excluding common words (a, to, the, and, lot, that, but, is, are, of, it).

  9. (9)

    What do you think you have learned today? 137 responses, 7.45 mean words per response (s.d.: 4.45). Top keywords (with >10 uses): robot/robots (122), how (78), program/programming (61), I (23), about (22), learnt/learned (18), do (16), have (12), you (10).

  10. (10)

    What did you like the most about today? 138 responses, 5.43 mean words per response (s.d.: 3.77). Top keywords (with >10 uses): robot/robots (81), program/programming (43), seeing (16).

  11. (11)

    What did you not like about today? 132 responses, 5.31 mean words per response (s.d.: 4.69). Top keywords (with >10 uses): nothing (65), I (23), all (13), we (11).

1.2 Workshop Feedback Data

A feedback questionnaire was provided to the participants after completion of the workshop (see Sect. 4.2), with the questions and mean responses (and s.d.) shown below. All questions were Likert items with a five point scale (1: positive, 5: negative). Eight questionnaires were completed.

  1. (1)

    Indicate your previous knowledge about the topics covered: 3.57 (1.27)

  2. (2)

    Are the objectives of the activity clear and concrete? 1.75 (1.16)

  3. (3)

    Have the contents been useful? 1.75 (1.16)

  4. (4)

    Have the resources and documents provided been adequate? 1.88 (1.46)

  5. (5)

    Have the teacher’s explanations been clear? 2 (1.31)

  6. (6)

    Does the teacher dominate the topic of the activity? 1.63 (1.41)

  7. (7)

    Has the format of the activity been adequate for the topic addressed? 1.63 (1.06)

  8. (8)

    Your overall satisfaction with the teacher is: 1.63 (1.41)

  9. (9)

    Your degree of overall satisfaction with the activity performed is: 1.63 (1.06)

  10. (10)

    Would you recommend carrying out this activity? (7 responses): 1.29 (0.49)

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Baxter, P., Del Duchetto, F., Hanheide, M. (2020). Engaging Learners in Dialogue Interactivity Development for Mobile Robots. In: Moro, M., Alimisis, D., Iocchi, L. (eds) Educational Robotics in the Context of the Maker Movement. Edurobotics 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 946. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18141-3_12

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