Erin Tolar

Papers

Total Citations

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About

Erin Tolar’s research sits at the vital intersection of human-centered robotics design and collaborative science learning. Her work explores how students, particularly in middle school classrooms, negotiate the complex space between social interaction and technical creation. Tolar’s most influential contribution, “Designing Human-Centered Robots: The Role of Constructive Failure” (45 citations), reframes failure not as a setback but as a critical design tool, arguing that iterative, visible breakdowns in human-robot interaction can drive deeper understanding and more empathetic engineering. This idea is grounded in her earlier study, “Between the Social and the Technical” (22 citations), which closely observed how students navigate the messy, real-world negotiations of collaborative robotics projects. Tolar also co-authored “Moving Apart and Coming Together” (14 citations), a key paper on discourse and engagement that argues for designing learning environments where students can collaboratively construct and represent shared understanding through complex, authentic problem-solving. By championing “constructive failure” and the social dynamics of co-creation, Tolar offers a compelling, human-first framework for both designing robots and teaching the next generation of engineers.