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Learning Symmetry with Tangible Robots

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Robotics in Education (RiE 2019)

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 1023))

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Abstract

Robots bring a new potential for embodied learning in classrooms. With our project, we aim to ease the task for teachers and to show the worth of tangible manipulation of robots in educational contexts. In this article, we present the design and the evaluation of two pedagogical activities prepared for a primary school teacher and targeting common misconceptions when learning reflective symmetry. The evaluation consisted of a comparison of remedial actions using haptic-enabled tangible robots with using regular geometrical tools in practical sessions. Sixteen 10 y.o. students participated in a between-subject experiment in a public school. We show that this training with the tangible robots helped the remediation of parallelism and perpendicularity related mistakes commonly made by students. Our findings also suggest that the haptic modality of interaction is well suited to promote children’s abstraction of geometrical concepts from spatial representations.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    We provide the material used in the experiment here: https://github.com/WafaJohal/Cellulo-Symmetry-Material.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Swiss National Science Foundation for supporting this project through the National Centre of Competence in Research Robotics.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CHILI Lab, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Wafa Johal, Sonia Andersen, Ayberk Ozgur & Pierre Dillenbourg

  2. MOBOTS, BIOROB Lab, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Wafa Johal, Sonia Andersen, Morgane Chevalier & Francesco Mondada

  3. HEP Vaud, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Sonia Andersen & Morgane Chevalier

Authors
  1. Wafa Johal
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  2. Sonia Andersen
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  3. Morgane Chevalier
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  4. Ayberk Ozgur
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  5. Francesco Mondada
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  6. Pierre Dillenbourg
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Wafa Johal .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Practical Robotics Institute Austria, Vienna, Austria

    Munir Merdan

  2. Practical Robotics Institute Austria, Vienna, Austria

    Wilfried Lepuschitz

  3. Practical Robotics Institute Austria, Vienna, Austria

    Gottfried Koppensteiner

  4. Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Bratislava, Slovakia

    Richard Balogh

  5. Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

    David Obdržálek

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Johal, W., Andersen, S., Chevalier, M., Ozgur, A., Mondada, F., Dillenbourg, P. (2020). Learning Symmetry with Tangible Robots. In: Merdan, M., Lepuschitz, W., Koppensteiner, G., Balogh, R., Obdržálek, D. (eds) Robotics in Education. RiE 2019. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 1023. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26945-6_24

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