PRE2019 3 Group8

What is the best way to design a study buddy?

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

Abstract

In this article one can read about our literature study towards a study buddy. The results are used to come up with recommendations for designing a study buddy. The study buddy can be used by children who have difficulties with keeping pace of fellow scholars.

Introduction

Subject

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

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.

Primary Users

The primary user in this report will be defined as the person that actually works and interacts with the study buddy robot. Therefore, the primary user will certainly be the somewhat less cognitively capable elementary school students that need some extra guidance during class. After the teacher is done explaining some new content, the student will be able to let the teacher know which concepts were not clear after the teacher explained them. The teacher can then activate which topics the study robot must explain again. The student will therefore use the robot the most.

Furthermore, the teacher is considered to be a primary user, because they need to activate the robot and select which topics should be taught again by the robot. So, the teacher also works with the study buddy first-hand in terms of setting up the robot’s study plan. Moreover, the teacher will keep track of the students’ progress after working with the study robot.

Secondary Users

Secondary users of the teaching robot are classified as people who may be indirectly influenced by the system in some way. In this case, where we assume a class in regular education with a relatively small amount of feeble-minded students that require a study buddy robot, the secondary user would be the classmates that are not assigned a study robot. An influence of a peer’s study robot on classmates might be a disruption of classmates’ concentration due to sound expressed by the robot during one of its explanations, or simply due to distracting images on the robot’s interface.

State-of-the-Art

In this section, research is done to investigate what is already known about (robotic) study buddies. Twenty-five articles are found, each article is shortly described to end up with an overview about different studies on study buddies.

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”.

College students rated the credibility of a teleoperated robot and an autonomous social robot acting as a teacher for the same lecture. Results showed that while the teleoperated robot was considered more credible, the overall teaching was of the same level and students are willing to follow lectures of autonomous robots.

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

To help with better studying, the robot should be placed/interacted with in a classroom rather than a hallway or office. The results were better when there was a two-way interaction, which means using the touchscreen and listening to the robot's voice.

7. Fachantidis, N., Dimitriou, A. G., Pliasa, S., Dagdilelis, V., Pnevmatikos, D., Perlantidis, P., & Papadimitriou, A. (2017). Android OS mobile technologies meets robotics for expandable, exchangeable, reconfigurable, educational, STEM-enhancing, socializing robot.

A socially assistive robot is being constructed to represent a companion of the student, motivating and rewarding him. The paper addresses existing prior-art and how an android OS smartphone will address the design requirements.

8. Fridin, M. (2014). Storytelling by a kindergarten social assistive robot: A tool for constructive learning in preschool education. Computers & education, 70, 53-64.

The experiment in this paper was designed to examine how KindSAR(Kindergarten social staff) can be used to engage preschool children in constructive learning, the basic principe of constructivist eductaion is that learning occurs when the learner is actively involved in a process of knowledge construction.

9. Lee E.K., & Lee Y.J. (2008). Elementary and Middle School Teachers’, Students’ and Parents’ Perception of Robot-Aided Education in Korea.

In Korea, robot-aided education has been studied. It was shown that robot-aided education was friendlier than other media-assisted education and enhanced children’s motivation. The perceptions and needs of intelligent educational service robot among teachers, students and parents in Korea were surveyed. In this study, it was found that they have a positive perception of the use of robots in schools. However, they do not want to use the robot as a teacher.

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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

This study let children with autism interact with both robots and humans. Results showed that, after first interacting with robots, their social skills were better when interacting with humans.

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. 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.

16. 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)

the humanoid robot RoboThespian gives a science lecture to children from grades 5-7 in two different environments, to check the perception of the robot by the children. The results are positive, and the educational goals attained.

17. 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.

18. 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.

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

Logbook

Date	Name	Activity	Time spent (HH:MM)
06/02/20	Bob	Searching articles, writing SotA	03:30