PRE2019 3 Group8

Subject

A study buddy that helps scholars to concentrate and motivate during their study sessions.

Abstract

Our ideas are:

• a study buddy to help you motivate and/or concentrate
• an app to reserve a seat in the train
• an app to see which seats are used in TU/e buildings.

Group Members

Name	Study	Student ID
Teis Arets	Psychology & Technology	1261991
Tom Bergmans	Psychology & Technology and Electrical Engineering	1253565
Nynke Boonstra	Psychology & Technology	1251155
Bob Hofstede	Psychology & Technology	0950282
Emile Merle	Computer Science	1244746

Planning

Each group has plan ready after Week 1, Plan contains:

• subject,
• objectives,
• users,
• state-of-the-art,
• approach,
• planning,
• milestones,
• deliverables,
• who will do what

Introduction

Problem statement

Since the introduction of the Dutch “Wet Passend Onderwijs” in 2014, elementary school children with physical or mental disabilities are stimulated to follow regular education as much as possible (“Scholen voor speciaal onderwijs bezwijken onder wachtlijsten,” 2019). However, according to Wim Ludeke of the Landelijk Expertisecentrum Speciaal Onderwijs (LESCO), the number of children applying for a custom form of education is increasing. The reason is that, as a result of the current lack of elementary school teachers (Traag, 2018), teachers of “regular schools” do not have the time and resources to support these children, and thus they are sent back to schools with extra support. This introduces the problem that children with a need for special education in schools that provide regular education cannot receive an optimal tuition. The focus in this paper will be on feeble-minded children: children with an IQ-score between 70 and 85 (Bexkens, Petry, Graas, & Huizinga, 2018). These children often experience difficulties with learning. For example, they often fail to understand a novel concept the first time it is explained in class, because of which they might need an extra, more elaborate explanation of the concept (Ahmad, Mubin, & Orlando, 2016). In circumstances like this, the teacher often lacks the time to provide this kind of extra tuition, but a robot can repeat it as many times as necessary.

Objectives

The aim of our study is to define a robot that can act as a study buddy to help zwakbegaafden keep in pace of fellow students. The aim of our study is to describe how the robot could perform as buddy in the best way.

Users

Scholars and/or students. Mostly scholars with problems concerning concentration, like autistic children. Or scholars that are too smart and don’t feel motivated anymore to study.

State-of-the-Art

1. Ahmad, M. I., Mubin, O., Shahid, S., & Orlando, J. (2017). Emotion and memory model for a robotic tutor in a learning environment.

A robot tried to teach children vocabulary, while the children were playing snake. The robot was either giving positive, negative or neutral feedback. The result of the positive feedback had a significant effect compared to the other two in addition the robots helped to learn the children learn vocabulary.

2. Ahmad, M. I., Mubin, O., & Orlando, J. (2016). Understanding behaviours and roles for social and adaptive robots in education: Teacher’s perspective.

The purpose of this study is to not only understand teacher's opinion on the existing effective social behaviours and roles but also to understand novel behaviours that can positively influence children performance in a language learning setting.

3. Andrews, J. and Clark, R. (2011). Peer mentoring works! Birmingham: Aston University.

This report draws on the findings of a three year study into peer mentoring conducted at 6 Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). The research findings provide empirical evidence that peer mentoring works.

4. Arnold, L., Lee, K.J., & Yip, J.C. (2016) Co-designing with children: An approach to social robot design.

The study let children co-design during their process of making a Friend Robot. It turns out that including children in the design process is a way to gain unique insights. Several of the children said that they would want their friend robot to be small and portable.

5. Edwards, A; Edwards, C; Spence, P; Harris, C; Gambino, A (2016), Robots in the classroom: Differences in students’ perceptions of credibility and learning between “teacher as robot” and “robot as teacher”, in Computers in Human Behavior, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.06.005

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6. E.Hyun ; H.Yoon ; S. Son (2010) Relationships between user experiences and children's perceptions of the education robot.

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7. Leite, I., Pereira, A., Castellano, G., Mascarenhas, S., Martinho, C., & Paiva, A. (2011, June). Social robots in learning environments: a case study of an empathic chess companion.

For the system used in this paper a multimodal system for predicting and modeling some of the children’s affective states is currently being trained using a corpus. With this model a personalised learning experience by adapting the robot’s empathy to the needs of the child is modeled.

8. Meghdari, A., Shariati, A., Alemi, M., Vossoughi, G. R., Eydi, A., Ahmadi, E., Tahami, R. (2018). Arash: A social robot buddy to support children with cancer in a hospital environment.

The social robot Arash is for educational and therapeutic involvement in a pediatric hospital to entertain, assist and educate cancer patients. Two experiments were done to evaluate the acceptance and involvement of the robot, the obtained results confirm high engagement and interest of pediatric cancer patients with the constructed robot.

9. Robins, B.; Dautenhahn, K; Te Boekhorst, R. & Billard, A. (2005); Robotic assistants in therapy and education of children with autism: can a small humanoid robot help encourage social interaction skills? In Universal Access in the Information Society

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10. Shahid, S., Krahmer, E., & Swerts, M. (2014). Child–robot interaction across cultures: How does playing a game with a social robot compare to playing a game alone or with a friend?

This study let children interact with social robots. The children played games with iCat, it turns out that the children prefer playing with iCat above playing alone. However, the children do even more prefer playing with friends.

11. Stephens, H., & Jairrels, V. (2003). Weekend Study Buddies: Using Portable Learning Centers.

The use of the study buddy may encourage parents to be more involved and if the children enjoy the study buddy at school it may extend that enjoyment at home.The student buddy may serve as an additional tool for individualizing instruction and enhancing the achievement for all students.

12. Thalluri, J., O'Flaherty, J.A., & Shepherd, P.L., (2014). Classmate peer-coaching: "A Study Buddy Support scheme".

The study investigated the effects of a human study buddy. The students with a study buddy scored higher on a test compared to the ones without.

13.Verner, I; Polishuk, A; Krayner, N (2016), Science Class with RoboThespian: Using a Robot Teacher to Make Science Fun and Engage Students, in IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine (Volume: 23, Issue: 2, June 2016)

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14. Werry, I. Dautenhahn, K. (1999) Applying Mobile Robot Technology to the Rehabilitation of Autistic children.

The paper discusses the background and major motivations which are driving the AuRoRA--(Autonomous Robotic platform as a Remedial tool for children with Autism) research project.In conclusion, robots can make a valid contribution in the process of rehabilitation and have the potential to make a contribution in the area of autism.

15. Werry, I., Dautenhahn, K., Harwin, W. (2001) Investigating a Robot as a Therapy Partner for Children with Autism.

The aurora project is investigating the possibility of using a robotic platform as a therapy aid for children with autism. The results thus far are encouraging in that they indicate that the children not only enjoy interacting and playing with the robot at various levels, but that they focus attention on the robot for longer than the toy truck. The children seem able to form very simple bonds with the robot and even to understand the basic interactions involved.