PRE2018 4 Group4

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Student Student Number
Anne Aarts 1026630
Rick van Beek 1243355
Bjarne Kraak 1262580
Paul van Dijk 1278347
Pelle Schram 1252089


Planning

Week Datum start ToDo/Milestones Who does it
1 29 April generate mutual understanding of the subject: plan of approach, Literature study, getting Nao robot. Getting nao robot: Anne, Literature study: everyone, wikipedia design: Pelle
2 6 May Mutual understanding and task for the robot: discuss literature study and decide what place the robot is best suited. approach schools. making of the enquête: Paul, Approach schools: Rick
3 13 May Task for the robot and approaching experts in the field: visit three schools. everyone
4 20 May Task for the robot: discuss school visits, decide the task for the robot. Everyone
5 27 May Task for the robot: Taak uitwerken. Everyone
6 3 June Programming the robot. Programming: Rick en Bjarne
7 10 June Programming the robot and testing. Everyone
8 17 June 20 June presentation, finish wiki. Everyone


Problem statement/ introduction

With the increasing diversity in modern society and the constantly increasing expectations of work, the amount of burnouts among educators has been higher than expected. Teachers suffer from emotional exhaustion with the increasing workload, which is a cause and consequence for the demand of more teachers in every level of schooling. In the Netherlands, one out of five teachers experiences symptoms of burnout (CBS, 2015). Also, a report of the NFER shows that in England job-related stress is higher among teachers than other professionals (NFER, 2019). The high amount of burnout cases among teachers is, in connection with others, caused by the high workload and due to the high degree of emotional involvement. Not only does this affect the teachers themselves: students are also negatively influenced by the presence of a burned-out teacher (Herman; Hickmon-Rosa; Reinke, 2017). A solution is yet to be found; several options are being research and considered. One of those options could be an implementation of robot technology.

Nursery teachers indicated that robots could help them with decreasing the workload in two ways: taking over a part of the paper work and entertain children for a certain time (Shiomi; Hagita, 2015). Robots are more efficient than humans, and they could give every student the proper level of education they need: brightest pupils can be given additional work, while those that need additional help would receive it. However, implementation of robots in education is an important subject in ethical discussions. Robots can probably never be as good as teachers. Humans are social animals, they like to learn from other people. Teaching includes looking after the students in the class, and spotting those in need of help, robots miss the ability to inspire. On top of that, robot technology in early stages of schooling can have major effects on the social development of children.

The current attitude towards robot in education is more shifted towards a negative side. However, a study in American public schools researched the views towards the robots before and after the deployment of an autonomous social robotic learning companion (Westlund et al., 2016). Teachers generally expected the robot to be disruptive, but found that it was not, and furthermore, had numerous positive ideas about the robot's potential as a new educational tool for their classrooms.

In this paper, we will research the implementation of robots for the purpose of entertaining the children. The focus will be on a robot with a more supportive role than an actual replacement, as actual replacement can have many harmful effects (Feil-Seifer; Matarić, 2010). This paper focuses on in which way a robot (misschien hier NaO van maken, en zeggen waarom je NaO kiest) can support teachers in their work by entertaining the children, in order for the workload to decreased while the level of education is not negatively influenced.

Target audience: kindergarten (4-6 years). Children are in one of their primary development stages, robots can have a major influence on them.
Objectives: educational quality stays the same/improves with the use of assistive robots. Elevating stress for the teachers.


Users:

  • Children: same quality of education. More equal distribution of attention among the children. More personal attention in general.
  • Teacher: relief work stress.
  • Parents: acceptance of the robots in the environment of the child. Give away a part of the child’s nursery.
  • Government: better quality of education, less money spent if possible.
  • Enterprises: want business opportunities.

Approach

The approach of this project will be as following:

  1. Literature research to generate mutual understanding of the subject.
  2. Create a plan where the robot could fit, a general idea and discuss the several functions of a kindergarten teacher.
  3. Subsequently, visit a kindergarten class and experience the environment. Ask the teacher what their perspective is on the best placement of the robot in the class by discussing the previously made plan.
  4. Thereafter, discuss and choose the best placement of the robot in the class.
  5. Lastly, program the Nao to perform that certain function.

Milestones: know best position for the robot. Robot performs an actual task.
Deliverable: lend “Nao” robot and program a task.

Orientational Literature Study

To earn some insights on the topic of robots in childcare, a broad literature study has been performed. The problem statement as formulated in the introduction is based on the literature found. A small summary of every article is provided. The scientific articles found are divided in the next topics for easy classification:

  • Teachers and burnouts
  • Roles
  • Acceptance
  • Ethics
  • Areas
  • Technology

Teachers and burnouts
The next articles are classified under the topic 'Teachers and burnouts':

Summary:

Summary: Study comparing teachers of regular schools and specialized schools with regard to, among others, stress and burnout. Specialized teachers are less emotionally exhausted, as they have adjustment due to their training, experience, and tailored classroom conditions.

  • Adrijana Višnjić Jevtić & Antonija Halavuk (2018) Early childhood teachers burn-out syndrome – perception of Croatian teachers, Early Years, DOI: 10.1080/09575146.2018.1482260

Summary:

Summary:

  • Herman, K. C., Hickmon-Rosa, J., & Reinke, W. M. (2018). Empirically Derived Profiles of Teacher Stress, Burnout, Self-Efficacy, and Coping and Associated Student Outcomes. Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, 20(2), 90–100. https://doi.org/10.1177/1098300717732066
  • J. K. Westlund et al., "Lessons from teachers on performing HRI studies with young children in schools," 2016 11th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Christchurch, 2016, pp. 383-390.

Roles
The next articles are classified under the topic roles:

  • The scenario and design process of childcare robot, PaPeRo. (Osada, Ohnaka & Sato, 2006)

Summary: Eight applications for the use of robots in childcare were looked into, concerning the development of personal robots: conversation, face recognition, touch, roll-call, quiz-master, phoning, greetings and story teller. After testing in the field, the most important conclusion was that giving a robot a personality made it more interesting for toddlers.

  • Socialization between toddlers and robots at an early childhood education center. (Tanaka, Cicourel & Movellan, 2007)

Summary: This paper tried to find out whether real bonding between robots and toddlers was possible, as it was not really shown in the past. By immersing a SotA robot in in a nursery school, it was found that contact between the toddlers and the robot improved over time and they begun to more and more treat it as a human being. In this research, the robot was not operating autonomous but it is concluded that the technology available should be able to autonomous bond and socialize with human toddlers for a significant period of time.

  • Toh, L. P. E., Causo, A., Tzuo, P.-W., Chen, I.-M., & Yeo, S. H. (2016). A Review on the Use of Robots in Education and Young Children. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 19(2), 148-163. https://dr.ntu.edu.sg/handle/10220/42422

Summary: The robot's influence on children's skills development could be grouped into four major categories: cognitive, conceptual, language and social skills.

  • Should we welcome robot teachers? (Sharkey, 2016)

Summary: This article investigates robots in classrooms in four different scenario’s: a robot teacher, a robot companion/peer, a care-elicting robot and a telepresence robot. Multiple ethical issues are identified: the privacy of students, the loss of human contact, the deception of students and the question of accountability. The writer concludes that human teachers should not be replaced by robot teachers, and robots’ primary use in classrooms should be for tasks that a human teacher can’t do. In tasks the teacher normally does, the human will outperform the robot.

Acceptance
The next articles are classified under the topic acceptance:

  • Social acceptance of a childcare support robot system. (Shiomi, & Hagita, 2015)

Summary: This journal article looks into the social acceptance of robot technologies in childcare in comparison to two present childcare technologies, like baby food. Therefore, a web-based survey as well as a field test was performed. Confirming their hypothesis, the social acceptance of childcare robot system was less than of the known childcare support technologies. However, when tested in the field, the social acceptance was higher than following the web-based survey. To investigate acceptance, three points of view were used: safety and trustworthy, diligence, and decreasing workload. For designing a childcare support system, they interviewed teachers at nursery schools. They found out that there were two options where a robot could help: 1. robot system that helps with paperwork; and 2. robot system that entertains children.

  • Serholt, S. (2018). Breakdowns in children's interactions with a robotic tutor: A longitudinal study

Summary: There are some problems faced in reality with a robotic tutor four of them stood out these were (1) the robot's inability to evoke initial engagement and identify misunderstandings, (2) confusing scaffolding, (3) lack of consistency and fairness, and finally, (4) controller problems.

  • Kulviwat, S. , Bruner II, G. C., Kumar, A. , Nasco, S. A. and Clark, T. (2007), Toward a unified theory of consumer acceptance technology. Psychology & Marketing, 24: 1059-1084. doi:10.1002/mar.20196

Summary: findings suggest that substantial improvement in the prediction of technology adoption decisions is possible by use of the CAT model with its integration of affect and cognition.


Ethics
The next articles are classified under the topic ethics:

  • Additional elements on the use of robots for childcare. (Ruiz-del-Solar, 2010)

Summary: In other articles, issues like privacy, deception and psychological damage are raised concerning robots for childcare. This article contributes to that discussion. Following this article, four things should be looked in to: 1. Regulate robot usages such at with toys or some sport installations. Including informative messages could help. 2. Change the analysis based on the age of the group. Beneath 5 years, it is shown that using robots can be harmful, above, it isn't. 3. Use data stored by robots in ethical way and destroy it in the cases where the parents don't are the owner. Storing (and destroying) the data should be law enforced. 4. Receiving no care, which happens when children are left alone, is way worse than receiving robot care. Robots could be a solution to the problems that arise from being home alone often.

  • Dry your eyes: Examining the roles of robots for childcare applications. (Feil-Seifer & Matarić, 2010)

Summary: Sharkey & Sharkey (2010) rose ethical questions about using robots for childcare. The argument for this was that the use of robots could lead to social neglect of the child. For this scenario to happen, the parents and children should be convinced that the robot is more capable than it actually is. It is shown that even children see the limitations of robots in an early stage. Thus, robots may facilitate some issues, they are not specific to robots as humans are very well capable of detecting the flaws. Detecting them not is just bad parenting. The argument is based on the assumption that robots will replace human interaction. However, it is shown that robot technologies can also improve human-human interaction by supplementing it.

  • Robot Lies in Health Care: When Is Deception Morally Permissible? (Matthias, 2015)

Summary: This article deals with the ethical problem of social robots being deceptive towards humans. It concludes with four requirements that would make deception morally permissible.


Areas
The next articles are classified under the topic areas:

  • Kindergarten assistive robotics (KAR) as a tool for spatial cognition development in pre-school education. (Keren, Ben-David, Fridin, 2012)

Summary: Kindergarten Assistive Robotics (KAR) is an innovative tool that promotes children’s development through social interaction. This study describes how KAR assists kindergarten educational staff in the teaching geometrical thinking, one of the aspects of spatial cognition by engaging the children in play-like interaction. One of the purposes of the KAR system is to promote children’s motor development. KAR can also promote children’s cognitive development in preschool education, for example by storytelling. In the present study we describe the use of KAR to promote children’s geometrical thinking, one of the aspects of spatial cognition.

  • Storytelling by a kindergarten social assistive robot: A tool for constructive learning in preschool education. (Fridin, 2014)

Summary: Kindergarten Social Assistive Robotics (KindSAR) is a novel technology that offers kindergarten staff an innovative tool for achieving educational aims through social interaction. This robot served as a teacher assistant by telling prerecorded stories to small groups of children while incorporating song and motor activities in the process. Storytelling is essential for children’s development of language expression, logical thinking, imagination, and creativity. The primary purpose of KindSAR is to provide assistance to the staff by engaging the children in educational games. The technology potentially provides a valuable contribution to the existing repertoire of tools for children’s cognitive and social development. KindSAR provides children and the educational staff with detailed feedback on the game/task performance and concurrently monitors children’s progress over time. Visual, audio, and task performance data can then be used both by kindergarten teams and for further study by researchers studying cognitive development. Second, productive though it may be for educational (and research) purposes, child–teacher interaction is often limited in view of the large number of children (35) in Israeli kindergarten classes and the small number of teachers (usually 2) per class.

  • Kindergarten Social Assistive Robot (KindSAR) for children’s geometric thinking and metacognitive development in preschool education: A pilot study. (Keren, Fridin, 2014)

Summary: Kindergarten Social Assistive Robot (KindSAR) is an innovative tool promotes children’s development through social interaction. This pilot study demonstrates how KindSAR can assist educational staff in the teaching of geometric thinking and in promoting the metacognitive development by engaging children in interactive play activities. KindSAR is a pre-school educational application of a class of robots known as Social Assistive Robotics (SAR) that geometric thinking can be developed in preschoolers.

  • Exploring the educational potential of robotics in schools: A systematic review (Benitti, 2012)

Summary: This article contains a systematic review of literature on performance of (mostly) educational robots in classrooms. It concludes that robots often have a positive impact on students’ learning of new concepts, especially in the STEM area. It also notes that the research on educational robot effectiveness is still quite limited.

  • Storytelling robot helps children learn language. (Lu, 2019)

Summary: The article is about a robot called Tega. It is cute, fluffy and appears to boost language skills in young children. Tega read picture books to 67 children aged from 4 to 6 years in weekly one-on-one meetings lasting an hour. During the sessions, it asked questions to gauge the listener’s opinion and comprehension, quizzing them on a word’s meaning or getting them to draw conclusions about a character. All the children who played with Tega the robot ended up with improved vocabularies.

Technology

  • Autonomous spherical mobile robot for child-development studies. (Michaud et al., 2005)

Summary: This article concerns the design of a robot aimed at children aged 12-24 months. It gives insight into factors that are important when designing a robot for young children: for example it should be robust and easy to understand. Another factor is showing intentionality. Children will be more engaged with objects when the objects seem to have a will, e.g. they can move independently.

  • Child’s Perception of Robot’s Emotions: Effects of Platform, Context and Experience (Cohen, Looije & Neerincx, 2014)

Summary: Two robots are compared: the NAO which cannot change its facial features but has a movable body and the iCat, which can change its facial features but does not have a body. The conclusion is that children correctly recognized emotions in both robots at a high rate. Therefore facial features are not required for robots to express emotions.

Possibilities of entertaining children

Five possibilities of entertaining toddler with the NAO robot are elaborated below:

  • Emotion recognition (Pelle)

Recognition of emotions is fundamental to healthy social relationships in life. From birth on people get in an constantly changing environment of emotional input from other humans, a process of recognition which is learned in the early stages of life. When children get into school, they get into contact with other children on an almost daily basis. They develop awareness of their own feelings and of emotion-eliciting events. When robots are introduced into early stages of school, they can have a major effect on the emotional development of children. With robots not (yet) being conscious or able to develop social contact in the way humans do, there could be a clash which introduces one of the most used arguments against robot deployment in schools. However, robots can be used to teach certain emotions, for example showing different facial expressions on a screen and let the children guess the emotion the robot is trying to imitate. The implementation of these robots has been researched and proved helpful with children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) (Leo et al., 2016).

  • Physical (Anne)

To stay healthy, it is important to be active and move enough during the day. Unfortunately overweight is becoming more prevalent, also among preschoolers. In the Netherlands in 2009, 8-18% of children aged 2-5 years old was overweight or obese (Sijtsma, 2013). Overweight in early childhood also affects the likelihood of obesity in later childhood and adulthood (Cardon, De Craemer, De Bourdeaudhuij & Verloigne, 2014). Therefore, stimulating physical activity in preschoolers would be a good use of the robot. This could be done by using a humanoid robot (like NAO) whose movements children can imitate. The robot could also engage the children with dance or an educational, physical game, like Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. A downside of this robot implementation is that physical activity requires enough space to move which can be hard in a full class room.

  • Learning by Quizgame (Paul)

At a young age children learn by playing and mimicking (Comer R., Gould E., Furnham A. 2013.), because of this a quiz where the children have to locate and bring an object which name is given is a good idea. For example the question “Can you bring me the red block?” is given. To reduce the stress and workload of the kindergarten teacher an anthropomorphized robot is the best option. (Han J. 2010)

  • Storytelling (Rick)

The study shows that entertainment, sense-making and knowledge are closely related in storytelling activities for young children. Importantly, for the young listeners storytelling is closely linked to entertainment, enchantment and fun. The young children, including toddlers, attended to the teachers’ story performance by engaging in attentive listening, volunteering embodied affective stances, verbal repetitions, and pre-emptive moves (Cekaite, 2018). The NAO robot could be used to perform the storytelling and to entertain the toddlers.

  • Touch (Bjarne)

It has been proven that touch can be very important for the development of children. For example, more touch contributed to a faster growth of newborns (Rausch, 1981). Therefore, touching robots can also be beneficial for toddlers. A study suggested that touching and viewing the robots was just as effective in improving the relationship towards the robot (Vickers, Ohlsson, Lacy & Horsley, 2004). In the same paper, a test or game was made using the NAO robot. This game could be further elaborated on and used for toddlers as well. In this way, touch could be used to get the attention of toddlers.

Interviewing nursery school teachers

Bibliography

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