Lessons from delivering a STEM workshop using educational robots given language limitations
Published in 10th International Conference on Robotics in Education, 2019
Recommended citation: Carrillo-Zapata D, Lee C, Digumarti KM, Hauert S, Boushel C. Lessons from delivering a STEM workshop using educational robots given language limitations. In: Merdan M., Lepuschitz W., Koppensteiner G., Balogh R., Obdržálek D. (eds) Robotics in Education. RiE 2019. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 1023. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26945-6_25
Abstract
Educational robots are increasingly being used in schools as learning tools to support the development of skills such as computational thinking because of the growing number of technology-related jobs. Using robots as a tool inside the classroom has been proved to increase motivation, participation and inclination towards STEM subjects at both primary and secondary levels; however, language has usually not been considered as a mitigating factor. This paper reports our experience delivering nine workshops in English, using Thymio robots, to over two hundred students aged 9-12 across a week in the French cities of Nancy and Metz. Our goal was to test whether students would still have fun, learn something new and gain an interest in STEM even when the workshop was conducted in a foreign language. Our results indicate that using language that is easy to understand, although foreign, has a strong direct correlation (p = 0.001) with having fun and that the latter positively affects learning and increased interest in STEM
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