Improving Teacher-Student Communication During Lectures Using a Robot and an Online Messaging/Voting System

Abstract

In recent decades and years classroom teaching has been influenced by the appearance of digital devices and the pervasiveness of the internet. In recent years robots started appearing in learning environments. Even though classroom presentations improved considerably, interaction between students and teachers has not improved greatly. We propose a new way of using a desktop robot and an online voting/messaging system to make the classroom experience more interactive. Concretely, in this paper we report on a lecture which was assisted by a robot. The students posted questions and opinions on an online messaging platform. The messages were then sent to the robot to be posed to the teacher, either directly or through a voting procedure. Students found this new way of interaction very efficient and useful for improving their communication with the teacher. At the same time the number of interactions should be controlled so it does not interfere with the teaching process.