Feasibility of Collaborative Learning with Robots Which Prompts Constructive Interaction

Abstract

This paper reports feasibility of collaborative learning with educational-support robots between human. We designed a robot to prompt the constructive interaction. Constructive interaction has been regarded as a foundation of collaborative learning. Constructive interaction occurs when two students are solving the same question. Therefore, the robot is designed that alternately perform the speaker motion and listener motion to occur constructive interaction with human.In the speaker motion, the robot explains a solving method to the partner and solves a question. Moreover, the robot improves its accuracy rate as learning progress. In the listener motion, the robot does not solve a question and paying attention to a partner who is solving the questions. The robot learns while solving a question issued by learning system with a college student. The college students learned in the learning system with the robot for one month and were videoed during that time to see how they learned. This results of the study suggest that robot, which alternately solves the question with a human and improves its accuracy rate as learning progress, prompts learners to learning by constructive interaction with robot in collaborative learning. This constructive interaction indicates that learners alternately solve the question with robot and listen to robot's speaking. However, learners interest in robot decrease when robot improves its accuracy rate at 100% and performs the same action. Additionally, the screen agent, which is designed same action as robot, does not prompt some learners to learning by constructive interaction because they feel lousy that screen agent could not solve the question correctly, so they ignore what the screen agent says. The same situation was occurred in some learners learning with robot