Thanks for sharing your project.  I'm curious to know how collaboration that's mediated by a robot differs or could differ from  collaboration that's mediated by a person. Are there possible deficits as well as possible gains?  

I am very supportive and interested in the goal that you describe of helping young children to appreciate diversity. Can you explain how the robot helps to promote or facilitate this? What have you found to be the most effective and how do you measure young children’s acceptance of diversity?

I concur that appreciating diversity is an important life skill and happy to learn of this theme in your program.  What are some ways you are assessing the appreciation of diversity among the participants in the program?  What criteria did you develop when creating the 8 20 minute episodes for the project? Thank you.

We do not assess children directly. As mentioned in the video, kindergarteners' development varies greatly. Some are quite chatty but most of them are quite shy and not yet able to articulate their thinking. We notice that all of them express and respond in various ways through bodily engagement, facial expressions, etc. Therefore, we have thick descriptions to be analyzed qualitatively. Also, we are exploring to computationally collect and process their multimodal behavioral reactions (using AI) to provide genuine evidence of their behavioral changes. 

Wonderful project!  I'm very interested in how you are analyzing the multimodal data -- tools, analytic approaches, etc.  I know  that you are in the process of development, so understand if it is too early to share.

Thank you!

Thank you for sharing your work! It looks very interesting! As I was watching the video I wondered if you experimented with the kind of response children may have to the robot depending on what voice the robot has (higher versus lower, one that reminds them of a child's voice, or a woman's voice, or a man's voice). How is the robot introduced to the children?

I’m very intrigued at the concept of a robot mediating collaboration, learning and cultural competency development, especially with young kids (I now desire a Skusie). Really looking forward to seeing more of the discoveries from the data, and how trust is built between the kids and with the robot. Are the kids aware the robot is present beforehand?  I wonder if the robot’s (proportion) size and voice contribute to trust building. Also interested in how the cultural competency is identified, and how much of it is observed. 

Excellent video and project, looking forward to more

 Thanks, there are a number of heart-warming interactions between children and robot. My team has been pleasantly surprised that the robot can be quite powerful to influence relational dynamics. The current study does not particularly examine the cultural competency but we would love to dig deeper in that regard in the next phase. 

Generally, children are immediately drawn to the robot, and after a short 'getting acquainted' phase they treat the robot like a full partner in a conversation. They take it's utterances seriously (for example, they comply when it asks them to "work together").

This is a very creative way of integrating robot to early childhood education and it provides an alternative way of future classroom picture. Using robot in a classroom will contribute to the implementation of meaningful small group activities and it will engage many students in learning. If this is successful, the entire teacher education program should be changed too. Teachers will play a facilitator role in the future. I am looking forward to seeing more empirical research and application of practical approaches in a real classroom. 

Thanks for the thoughts. Although robot technology is still developing, later it can be teachers' tool.

Skoosie for President!  This is excellent work in building connections between children.  Thank you.

Skusie’s ability to engage young learners is promising and awesome because of the numerous ongoing interactions that it may offer beyond teacher guided/designed processes within a single classroom space.

This is great!  What are your future plans with Skusie? 

 Probably keep moving on, integrating playful learning with early academic skills.