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  1. Yanghee Kim
  2. http://createcenter.net/people.php
  3. Director
  4. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  5. Northern Illinois University
  1. Michael Tscholl
  2. http://createcenter.net/michael.php
  3. Associate Director
  4. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  5. Northern Illinois University

Inclusive Design for Engaging All Learners (IDEAL): Designing Technology for ...

NSF Awards: 1623561

2019 (see original presentation & discussion)

Grades K-6

The project IDEAL investigates the design of an embodied, humanoid robot as a cultural broker that mediates young children’s collaboration. As children start schooling, they come with a unique way of thinking and doing that are embedded implicitly and explicitly in their home cultures. Also, being able to work with others is essential for gaining confidence in STEM and achieving STEM success. The IDEAL team experiments with robot brokering in a socio-technical triad of a robot and two children coming from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. In this setting, the robot mediates the children to tell their personal stories and work together to co-create artifacts while they practice early academic skills foundational to STEM learning.

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Discussion from the 2019 STEM for All Video Showcase (19 posts)
  • Icon for: Sara Lacy

    Sara Lacy

    Facilitator
    Senior Scientist
    May 13, 2019 | 01:45 p.m.

    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?  

     

  • Icon for: Michael Tscholl

    Michael Tscholl

    Co-Presenter
    Associate Director
    May 13, 2019 | 03:59 p.m.

    thank you very much for this interesting question!

    We have observed very significant differences using a human mediator and the robot. children are much less engaged in the tasks/games when a human mediator is present, than when the robot is present.

    The robot triggers new forms of interaction, communication and collaboration. Children typically comply quickly with the robot's suggestion of, for example, "can you please take turns" or "can you work together"? They much less comply when a human mediators asks the same of them. We are now exploring the reason of this different behavior.

     

  • Icon for: Christine Cunningham

    Christine Cunningham

    Facilitator
    preK-12 Science and Engineering Educator
    May 13, 2019 | 02:44 p.m.

    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?

  • Icon for: Yanghee Kim

    Yanghee Kim

    Lead Presenter
    Director
    May 14, 2019 | 05:00 p.m.

    For the first question, referring to multicultural education, the robotic triad plays as third space where children's personal experiences can be shared and appreciated and children co-create artifacts unique in their triads. The robot is bilingual so children with a different language background can feel included. 

    For the second question, we implement the study in a natural school setting as part of their daily routines. This is not a classical controlled study with pre/post tests. Rather we ethnographically observe children's multimodal behaviors to see how their responses to the robot's prompts and interactions with the partner change overtime. Phenomena of interest is equitable friendships and collaborative communications fostered by the robot. Referring to relevant literature, we pay attention to children's behaviors, such as turn taking, sharing, linguistic alignment, co-creation of artifacts, etc.

  • Icon for: Kenneth Huff

    Kenneth Huff

    Facilitator
    Teacher of Science
    May 13, 2019 | 09:24 p.m.

    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.

  • Icon for: Michael Tscholl

    Michael Tscholl

    Co-Presenter
    Associate Director
    May 16, 2019 | 01:54 p.m.

    The episodes were designed to 1) prompt collaboration and 2) elicit children's 'world'. For example, Skusie asks about 'birthdays on earth'; children bring in their own understanding and experiences to explain it to Skusie. Children with different cultural backgrounds bring in different understandings and experiences. As for collaboration, episodes are designed so that selections must be made jointly (e.g. select an animal for a zoo) and choices must be agreed on jointly.

  • Icon for: Yanghee Kim

    Yanghee Kim

    Lead Presenter
    Director
    May 14, 2019 | 05:00 p.m.

    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. 

     

  • Icon for: Bridget Dalton

    Bridget Dalton

    Higher Ed Faculty
    May 15, 2019 | 07:11 p.m.

    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!

  • Icon for: Yanghee Kim

    Yanghee Kim

    Lead Presenter
    Director
    May 16, 2019 | 01:23 p.m.

    You're right Bridget. This is a very cross-disciplinary project. In the research team, we have colleagues from engineering and computer science. They are developing AI-based algorithms to automatically analyze facial expressions, and vocal profiles to assess children's engagement.

  • Icon for: Perla Myers

    Perla Myers

    Higher Ed Faculty
    May 15, 2019 | 10:35 p.m.

    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?

  • Icon for: Yanghee Kim

    Yanghee Kim

    Lead Presenter
    Director
    May 16, 2019 | 01:36 p.m.

    The robot Skusie was introduced as a newbie from another planet and used a synthetic voice. Also, we didn't want to replicate the gender-related bias in child robot relations so used gender neutral voice. When asked, children said Skusie's gender the same as their own. In one episode, when it asked them to choose a b-day present for its friend, children asked a boy or girl? Skusie said "we don't have such thing on my planet" or "we are robots."

  • Icon for: Danielle Espino

    Danielle Espino

    Researcher
    May 16, 2019 | 02:42 a.m.

    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

  • Icon for: Yanghee Kim

    Yanghee Kim

    Lead Presenter
    Director
    May 16, 2019 | 01:46 p.m.

     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").

     

  • Moon-Heum Cho

    Researcher
    May 16, 2019 | 03:42 p.m.

    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. 

  • Icon for: Yanghee Kim

    Yanghee Kim

    Lead Presenter
    Director
    May 16, 2019 | 05:08 p.m.

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

  • Icon for: Eric Hamilton

    Eric Hamilton

    Researcher
    May 16, 2019 | 06:26 p.m.

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

     

  • Mayra Daniel

    Researcher
    May 16, 2019 | 07:18 p.m.

    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.

  • Icon for: Rachel Adler

    Rachel Adler

    Higher Ed Faculty
    May 17, 2019 | 10:31 a.m.

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

  • Icon for: Yanghee Kim

    Yanghee Kim

    Lead Presenter
    Director
    May 18, 2019 | 07:15 p.m.

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

  • Further posting is closed as the event has ended.