| 1. |
- Ekström, Sara, et al.
(författare)
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New Teacher Roles With Social Robots as Actors in the Classroom
- 2020
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Ingår i: INTED 2020. - : International Association for Technology, Education and Development. - 9788409179398 ; , s. 6636-6644
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Robots are entering the classrooms and provide new opportunities for education. Educational robots can either be used for programming, or as new types of social actors where these robots are designed to play different roles such as teachers, tutors, peers or tutees. However, new social actors affect the scene for learning by altering the social dynamics in the classroom, which in turn affects the roles of the other actors. In this study we explore the role of teachers in robot-enhanced classrooms, and ask the question: What new teacher roles emerge when robots enter the classroom as social actors? In this study we explore a setting where a student plays an educational mathematics game together with a humanoid robot on an interactive whiteboard, guided and supported by teachers and peers from the class. Four classes of school children in 2nd and 41h grade participated and played for about 5 minutes each. The game playing sessions were video-recorded, and 32 sessions were randomly selected, transcribed, coded and thematically analyzed using Interaction Analysis. Situations in which the teacher acted were analyzed to investigate when and why the teacher intervened and what types of support that was provided to the student. Results show that the teacher took several roles during the sessions. Traditional roles include moderator organizing the learning and managing social interactions as well as educator supporting the student’s learning by scaffolding mathematical problems and game-playing strategies. In addition, the teacher had to act technical facilitator handling problems and challenges with using the robot, and the role as interaction mentor guiding and supporting the student to manage the social interaction with the robot. The latter two roles are challenging and unfamiliar to most teachers. We conclude that using robots as social actors in education introduce new, challenging teacher roles requiring substantial and specific digital competence.
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| 2. |
- Ekström, Sara
(författare)
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Teaching with social robots
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The school's digitalization is an ongoing process that brings new didactic opportunities, but also challenges. Social educational robots entail a complex teaching situation and affect the teacher's role, actions, and responsibilities in the classroom. Through observations in an authentic classroom context, this thesis aims to provide a nuanced and realistic picture of how teaching with social robots can unfold. Social educational robots have previously been explored in different educational contexts, but few studies shed light on the teacher role. Nor is it discussed what new aspects of digital competence become important when teaching with educational technologies that exhibit social behaviour. This thesis studies teacher actions and intended actions in a learning activity where a child collaborates with a social educational robot. In the activity, the robot is designed to act as a learning companion (tutee), the child acts as a teacher (tutor), and sometimes a few peers participate. The study is based on video observations of teachers' dialogues and behaviours in this learning activity, and a total of 25 hours of recorded video material has been analysed. The observations are supplemented with interviews, workshops, and questionnaires, where more teachers reflect on teaching with social robots.The result shows that social educational robots may contribute to relevant learning situations but also introduce new teacher roles, bringing additional challenges. The teacher's most prominent role in this learning activity is as an interaction mentor, in which the teacher assists the verbal and non-verbal interaction between the child and the robot, such as verbal communication fluency, explaining the robot's behaviour to the child, and maintaining attention.The result also identifies challenges that may emerge if social educational robots are used for teaching and learning. One of these challenges is due to the teacher relating to the robot as a didactic tool as well as a social actor, interchangeably. This duality causes conflicts in the teacher's actions, as the two perspectives call for different behaviours. The thesis also shows that using social educational robots entails new demands for adequate digital competence.
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| 3. |
- Ljungdahl Eriksson, Martin, 1982-
(författare)
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Space in the Space : Designing Sound Environments for the Shared Indoor Workspace
- 2024
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The sound environment in shared indoor workspaces emerges through the interplay of physical layout, materials, technology, and social dynamics. These spaces are designed with specific purposes in mind, taking acoustics into account during construction. However, the true quality of the sound environment can only be assessed when these spaces are actively used. The perception of a shared indoor sound environment is not fixed or absolute but is influenced by individual perceptions, attitudes, and intentions.A significant challenge in designing shared indoor workspaces is thus to accommodate the diverse preferences of various users in a common area, a task complicated by the subjective experience of sound. Prior research has primarily focused on reducing unwanted noise through physical installations and assessing their effects, with the emphasis of sound environment management being the implementation of broad, global solutions that aim to cater to the majority. However, there has been minimal initiative toward proactively improving these complex environments while acknowledging the subjective and context-dependent nature of sound environments.This thesis suggests that the sound environment within a workspace ought to be perceived as a socio-technical system, wherein the design of such environments is a complex and 'wicked' problem. By adopting a design approach that introduces prototypes of an ambient sound environment system into the workspace, this study aims to explore whether various adaptations of the sound xi environment using this technical solution can improve perceived sound quality. The research endeavors to examine the practical use of sound as a design element within workplace settings. The study incorporates laboratory research, field tests in four different offices, and interviews with professionals in indoor environment design.The thesis presents a design program for shared indoor workplace sound environments, emphasizing the creation of pleasant, unnoticeable sound spaces that offer shielding from office disturbances, known as Space in the Space. It employs a 4E cognitive framework and views both sound, technology, and humans as design materials, aiming to craft a personalized and meaningful sound environment that balances noise reduction with qualitative sound aspects, enabling users to tailor their auditory space and collaborate in the design process. This inquiry explores the complex relationship between auditory comfort, personal preferences, and functionality in shared workspaces. The strong concept of 'Sound Users', is introduced as a view that emphasizes the interactive relationship between users and sound environments. Individuals are not just passive receivers of sound; they are active participants, shaping, modifying, and personalizing their auditory surroundings to suit their needs and activities.The results suggest that the challenge in designing soundscapes for shared indoor spaces involves striking a careful balance. This entails harmonizing individual and collective needs by creating the possibility of a Space in the Space within a collective auditory environment. This is achieved by adhering to individual preferences through offering personalization features and control to the sound users. When presented with options, users often want to customize them and tend to prefer sounds that not only mask unwanted noise but also provide a sense of comfort and pleasure. Their aim goes beyond simple utility, highlighting a pursuit of meaningful sound environments through sounds that are both functional and pleasant.
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| 4. |
- Pareto, Lena, 1962-, et al.
(författare)
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Children's learning-by-teaching with a social robot versus a younger child : Comparing interactions and tutoring styles.
- 2022
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Robotics and AI. - : Frontiers Media S.A.. - 2296-9144. ; 9
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Human peer tutoring is known to be effective for learning, and social robots are currently being explored for robot-assisted peer tutoring. In peer tutoring, not only the tutee but also the tutor benefit from the activity. Exploiting the learning-by-teaching mechanism, robots as tutees can be a promising approach for tutor learning. This study compares robots and humans by examining children's learning-by-teaching with a social robot and younger children, respectively. The study comprised a small-scale field experiment in a Swedish primary school, following a within-subject design. Ten sixth-grade students (age 12-13) assigned as tutors conducted two 30 min peer tutoring sessions each, one with a robot tutee and one with a third-grade student (age 9-10) as the tutee. The tutoring task consisted of teaching the tutee to play a two-player educational game designed to promote conceptual understanding and mathematical thinking. The tutoring sessions were video recorded, and verbal actions were transcribed and extended with crucial game actions and user gestures, to explore differences in interaction patterns between the two conditions. An extension to the classical initiation-response-feedback framework for classroom interactions, the IRFCE tutoring framework, was modified and used as an analytic lens. Actors, tutoring actions, and teaching interactions were examined and coded as they unfolded in the respective child-robot and child-child interactions during the sessions. Significant differences between the robot tutee and child tutee conditions regarding action frequencies and characteristics were found, concerning tutee initiatives, tutee questions, tutor explanations, tutee involvement, and evaluation feedback. We have identified ample opportunities for the tutor to learn from teaching in both conditions, for different reasons. The child tutee condition provided opportunities to engage in explanations to the tutee, experience smooth collaboration, and gain motivation through social responsibility for the younger child. The robot tutee condition provided opportunities to answer challenging questions from the tutee, receive plenty of feedback, and communicate using mathematical language. Hence, both conditions provide good learning opportunities for a tutor, but in different ways.
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| 5. |
- Rangraz, Masood, 1983-, et al.
(författare)
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Workplace work-integrated learning : supporting industry 4.0 transformation for small manufacturing plants by reskilling staff
- 2021
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Ingår i: International Journal of Lifelong Education. - : Routledge. - 0260-1370 .- 1464-519X. ; 40:1, s. 5-22
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Small manufacturing plants nowadays need to consider Industry 4.0 to stay competitive in the market. Among the challenges regarding the transformation towards Industry 4.0 are requirements to re-skill the staff for the new work environment. The staff have to either adapt to the workplace transformation brought by digitalisation, automation and robotics or face layoffs. This paper reports on a transformation process towards Industry 4.0 which was conducted in a small manufacturing enterprise where automated assembly line, industrial robots, codes and algorithms have replaced the previous manual set-up. In order to extend the learning models from educational to workplace settings, we investigated how a small manufacturing plant tackles the challenge of transformation towards Industry 4.0 with existing staff. We examined the transformation process through non-participant observations and 17 interviews during the initiation phase, and before, during, and after the new robotic system was launched. Based on the empirical study, we propose (a) a transformation method with respect to the workplace and adult learning scholarship and (b) a taxonomy of work-integrated learning activities to support the learning needed to manage transformations towards industry 4.0.
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| 6. |
- Serholt, Sofia, 1986, et al.
(författare)
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Trouble and Repair in Child–Robot Interaction: A Study of Complex Interactions With a Robot Tutee in a Primary School Classroom
- 2020
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Robotics and AI. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 2296-9144. ; 7:46
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Today, robots are studied and expected to be used in a range of social roles within classrooms. Yet, due to a number of limitations in social robots, robot interactions should be expected to occasionally suffer from troublesome situations and breakdowns. In this paper, we explore this issue by studying how children handle interaction trouble with a robot tutee in a classroom setting. The findings have implications not only for the design of robots, but also for evaluating their benefit in, and for, educational contexts. In this study, we conducted video analysis of children's group interactions with a robot tutee in a classroom setting, in order to explore the nature of these troubles in the wild. Within each group, children took turns acting as the primary interaction partner for the robot within the context of a mathematics game. Specifically, we examined what types of situations constitute trouble in these child–robot interactions, the strategies that individual children employ to cope with this trouble, as well as the strategies employed by other actors witnessing the trouble. By means of Interaction Analysis, we studied the video recordings of nine group interaction sessions (n = 33 children) in primary school grades 2 and 4. We found that sources of trouble related to the robot's social norm violations, which could be either active or passive. In terms of strategies, the children either persisted in their attempts at interacting with the robot by adapting their behavior in different ways, distanced themselves from the robot, or sought the help of present adults (i.e., a researcher in a teacher role, or an experimenter) or their peers (i.e., the child's classmates in each group). In terms of the witnessing actors, they addressed the trouble by providing guidance directed at the child interacting with the robot, or by intervening in the interaction. These findings reveal the unspoken rules by which children orient toward social robots, the complexities of child–robot interaction in the wild, and provide insights on children's perspectives and expectations of social robots in classroom contexts.
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| 7. |
- Willermark, Sara, 1988-, et al.
(författare)
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Unpacking the Role of Boundaries in Computer-Supported Collaborative Teaching
- 2020
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Ingår i: Computer Supported Cooperative Work. - : Springer. - 0925-9724 .- 1573-7551. ; 29:6, s. 743-767
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this study, we explore the role of boundaries for collaborative learning and transformation of work practices to occur. We report from a three-year action research project including well over 1800 h of participation by the authors. The empirical data are based on project participation work including observations and field notes, project reports, interviews and a questionnaire, within a school development project in Nordic elementary school. In the project, teachers and researchers from three Nordic countries, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, collaborated to develop novel, on-line teaching models for a Nordic Virtual Classroom. The virtual classroom refers to an educational setting where teaching and learning activities are conducted collaboratively in cross-national teams "in the cloud" by means of information technology. During the project, teachers were challenged in their current teaching practices and the project resulted in collaborative learning and transformation of work practice. In this paper, we explore underlying reasons for such transformation to occur by unpacking how and why boundaries can play a role in computer-supported collaborative teaching and stimulate a transformation towards digitalized teaching practices. The paper contributes with an explanation of how the composition of boundaries of a technological, organizational, and cultural nature operates and constitutes a resource for learning and principles for how boundaries can be used for such purpose.
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