Learning about, from, and with Robots: Students' Perspectives

Abstract

Robotics technology is expected to alter many aspects of people's lives as well as the field of education. The following study w ill be concerned with three scenarios in w hich robots were related to student learning, i. e. learning about, from, and with robots. The analysis of the interview data, garnered from 85 students, allows for an understanding of students' perceptions and attitudes towards robots and learning: (a) generally, the younger the students, the more enthusiastic they were about learning about robots; (b) robots were predominantly perceived as being male or having no sex; (c) the students found it possible to learn something from robots, though this itself did not suggest that they regarded teaching robots as teachers; (d) an element critically lacking in robots, which allowed them to act as qualified teachers, was the 'emotion' generally embedded in human behaviors and communications; and (e) in relation to the scenario of learning with robots, the students were expecting the robots to perform roles such as private tuition or that of learning tools rather than companions or collaborators.