“If a Robot was Teaching, Then Everybody Would Definitely Like School Better”: An Analysis of Grade 3-5 Children’s Perceptions of Learning STEM Vocabulary with an Educational Social Robot

Abstract

This qualitative study explored 20 grade 3-5 children’s perceptions of learning STEM vocabulary with an educational social robot. A semi-structured interview protocol was used to elicit children’s perceptions. Interviews were recorded and transcribed into a database reflecting one talk-turn per row (911 talk-turns total). Two coders used emergent coding and constant comparative method to identify talk-turns that reflected children’s perceptions of the assets and drawbacks of learning STEM vocabulary with the robot. Findings identified new assets and drawbacks about the robot’s instruction, and new drawbacks about the robot’s speech, which were not explored in previous research. Findings suggest design implications, including designing robots with the capacity for more individualization of instruction and adjustable movement and speech features based on learners’ preferences.