Abstract:

Robots are currently entering the classrooms in different forms and provide new opportunities for education. For example, educational robots can be used as programming objects, i.e., design materials for teaching students how to program, but they can also be used as new types of social actors. As social actors, robots are designed to act in various roles in the classroom such as teachers, tutors, peers or novices. However, introducing robots as social actors in the classroom creates challenges and raises questions beyond their educational purpose. New social actors affect the scene for learning by altering the social dynamics in the classroom, which in turn affect the roles of the other actors. In this study we explore the role of the teacher in a robot-enhanced classroom, and ask the question: What new teacher roles emerge when robot enters the classroom as social actors?

In this study we explore a setting where a social robot is designed to play an educational mathematics game with a student on an interactive whiteboard. The student acts tutor and the robot tutee since the role-assignment is based on the theory of learning-by-teaching. A prototype system was tested in a classroom study in which four classes of school children in 2nd and 4th grade participated. The students took turns acting as the primary interaction partner and played for approximately 5 minutes each while a small group of peers were supporting on the side. The sessions were video-recorded, and 33 children’s game-playing sessions were randomly selected, transcribed, coded and thematically analyzed using Interaction Analysis. The analysis showed that the game-playing students seek support from the teacher as well as from the peers in many situations, but also that the teacher intervenes spontaneously to help. The situations where these interventions occurred, as well as the teacher responses, were analyzed further to investigate when and why the teacher intervened and what types of scaffolding that was provided to the student.

The result showed that the teacher took several different roles during the sessions. The teacher acted as moderator organizing the game-playing activity and handled interaction between peers, and as educator supporting the student's learning by scaffolding mathematical problems and game-playing strategies. These are common roles taken by teachers, but in addition the teacher had to act as facilitator handling technical problems and challenges with the robot that arose during the game sequences. Finally, the teacher also assumed a role as mentor and supported the student socially in his/her tutoring task, including guidance on how to tutor and respond to a robot tutee in various situations. The two latter roles can be challenging and unfamiliar to many teachers.

The conclusion is that by introducing robots as social actors in the classroom, the teachers in additional to all other roles they already orchestrate in the classroom, will face new challenging roles related to the robot in the classroom.

Keywords:

Educational robots, social robots, education, classroom study, robot tutee, teacher role.