Robotics education initiative for analyzing learning and child-parent interaction

Abstract

This paper presents a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the first robotics education workshop in which children and parents interact by experimenting with concepts of robotics. Unlike traditional robotics educational workshops that are targeted to children only, our initiative encourages children and parents to interact as a team and learn through ludic activities using a robotic kit. Therefore, apart from presenting the advantages of robotic educational tools, the concept of parenting styles is introduced in order to explore their relationships with participants learning. Analysis results describe child's performance and evidence of the influence of parenting style in the child's learning process. Our approach establishes a precedent to design and implement innovative workshops to encourage and motivate students in order to gain interest in science and technology through robotics, and their parents to use positively the different aspects of parenting styles in the learning process of their children in these workshops.