The first-ever study of Michigan State University’s pioneering robot-learning course shows that online students who use the innovative robots feel more engaged and connected to the instructor and students in the classroom.
Stationed around the class, each robot has a mounted video screen controlled by the remote user that lets the student pan around the room to see and talk with the instructor and fellow students participating in-person.
The study, published in Online Learning, found that robot learning generally benefits remote students more than traditional videoconferencing, in which multiple students are displayed on a single screen.
Christine Greenhow, MSU associate professor of educational psychology and educational technology, said that instead of looking at a screen full of faces as she does with traditional videoconferencing, she can look a robot-learner in the eye – at least digitally.
“It was such a benefit to have people individually embodied in robot form – I can look right at you and talk to you,” Greenhow said.
The technology, Greenhow added, also has implications for telecommuters working remotely and students with disabilities or who are ill.
MSU’s College of Education started using robot learning in 2015. Greenhow and Benjamin Gleason, a former MSU doctoral student who is now a faculty member at Iowa State University, studied an educational technology doctoral course in which students participated in one of three ways: in-person, by robot and by traditional videoconferencing.
Courses that combine face-to-face and online learning, called hybrid or blended learning, are widely considered the most promising approach for increasing access to higher education and students’ learning outcomes. The number of blended-learning classrooms has increased dramatically in the past decade and could eventually make up 80 percent or more of all university classes, the study notes.
With traditional videoconferencing, Greenhow said, remote students generally can’t tell the instructor is looking at them and can get turned off from joining the discussion. “These students often feel like they’re interrupting, like they’re not fully participating in the class. And as an instructor, that’s like death – I can’t have that.”
“The main takeaway here,” Greenhow added, “is that students participating with the robots felt much more engaged and interactive with the instructor and their classmates who were on campus.”
To engage the robot from home, students just need to download free software onto their computer.
Learn more: ROBOT LEARNING IMPROVES STUDENT ENGAGEMENT
The Latest on: Robot learning
[google_news title=”” keyword=”robot learning” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]- World’s first fully electric robot boasts 550 trillion ops, 4mph speedon May 4, 2024 at 7:06 am
Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center Company has developed the world's first humanoid robot that can sprint at a steady speed of 3.73 mph.
- Are We in the Age of Curious Robots?on May 4, 2024 at 5:01 am
A team from ETH Zurich is teaching a wheeled and legged robot to complete tasks. Unusually though, they're using a curiosity-based incentive/reward architecture. The method, it's claimed, can speed up ...
- New AI Algorithm Enables Faster, More Reliable Learningon May 3, 2024 at 2:36 pm
Recent research by Northwestern Engineering researchers, and published in Nature Machine Intelligence, unveils a novel artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm tailored for smart robotics.
- Ozobot Announces New Robot Recycle and Replace Programon May 3, 2024 at 5:00 am
NEWPORT BEACH, CA, USA – Ozobot, a global leader in programmable robotics and STEAM-based learning solutions that empower the next generation of creators from K-12 to higher education and beyond, ...
- Random robots are more reliableon May 2, 2024 at 1:19 pm
New algorithm encourages robots to move more randomly to collect more diverse data for learning. In tests, robots started with no knowledge and then learned and correctly performed tasks within a ...
- Humanoid Robot With AI Mind Is Meant to Think Just Like People, And It’s Learningon May 2, 2024 at 1:10 am
Canadian startup Sanctuary AI introduces the seventh generation of the Phoenix robot with a mind and capabilities meant to mimic the human one ...
- Robot dog masters walking, trotting, pronking in a major milestoneon May 1, 2024 at 7:11 am
Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) have trained a quadrupedal robot using machine learning, enabling it to adeptly navigate without falling by seamlessly ...
- Trotting robots reveal emergence of animal gait transitionson April 30, 2024 at 6:23 am
A four-legged robot trained with machine learning by EPFL researchers has learned to avoid falls by spontaneously switching between walking, trotting, and pronking—a milestone for roboticists as well ...
- Humanoid robots are learning to fall wellon April 28, 2024 at 1:15 pm
The savvy marketers at Boston Dynamics produced two major robotics news cycles last week. The larger of the two was, naturally, the electric Atlas ...
- Europe taps deep learning to make industrial robots safer colleagueson April 26, 2024 at 1:07 am
European researchers have launched the RoboSAPIENS project to make adaptive industrial robots more efficient and safer to work with humans.
via Google News and Bing News