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.
Emerging Technologies, Research / Evaluation, Broadening Participation
Northern Illinois U
Cyberlearning and Future Learning Technologies (Cyberlearning)
Related Content for Inclusive Design for All Learners (IDEAL)
Discussion from the 2019 STEM for All Video Showcase (19 posts)
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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?
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."
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
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.
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.
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.
Sara Lacy
Senior Scientist
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?
Michael Tscholl
Associate Director
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.
Christine Cunningham
preK-12 Science and Engineering Educator
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?
Yanghee Kim
Director
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.
Kenneth Huff
Teacher of Science
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.
Michael Tscholl
Associate Director
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.
Yanghee Kim
Director
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.
Bridget Dalton
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!
Yanghee Kim
Director
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.
Perla Myers
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?
Yanghee Kim
Director
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."
Danielle Espino
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
Yanghee Kim
Director
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
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.
Yanghee Kim
Director
Thanks for the thoughts. Although robot technology is still developing, later it can be teachers' tool.
Eric Hamilton
Skoosie for President! This is excellent work in building connections between children. Thank you.
Mayra Daniel
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.
Rachel Adler
This is great! What are your future plans with Skusie?
Yanghee Kim
Director
Probably keep moving on, integrating playful learning with early academic skills.
Further posting is closed as the event has ended.