Title
Lessons from Delivering a STEM Workshop Using Educational Robots Given Language Limitations.
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 similar to 10(-3)) with having fun and that the latter positively affects learning and increased interest in STEM.
Year
DOI
Venue
2019
10.1007/978-3-030-26945-6_25
ROBOTICS IN EDUCATION: CURRENT RESEARCH AND INNOVATIONS
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Educational robots,Bio-inspired robots,Biomimicry,Foreign-language workshop,Thymio
Conference
1023
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
2194-5357
0
0.34
References 
Authors
0
5