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Educational Robots and Flow Experience

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Robotics in Education (RiE 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems ((LNNS,volume 515))

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Abstract

Achieving the state of flow as the optimal experience is known to influence general personal well-being, help the learning process and improve solidarity with others, to name only a few of the many benefits of flow. Thus, educators often strive to have their students reach the state of flow in the classroom. The authors of this paper argue that working with educational robots can be a flow-inducing activity as it resembles structured play, and such play is one of the ways to achieve flow. The aim of the present study was to test flow-proneness and flow experience in extracurricular workshops on robotics. For this purpose, 37 early and middle adolescents involved in extracurricular robotics completed an online questionnaire on their flow-proneness and flow. The results show that the participants are both prone to experience flow in robotics and that they do experience it while working with educational robots. In the discussion the authors portray ways in which a teacher can help create a classroom environment in a robotics class that may help the learners reach the state of flow.

The authors thank professor Marijan Palmović for his useful comments on the paper and Martina Gajšek for her help with the statistical analysis. This paper has been supported by the Croa-tian Science Foundation as part of the project “Transforming ro-bots into educational tool” UIP-2017–05-5917 HRZZ-TRES. The work of the doctoral student Petra Karabin has been supported by the “Young researchers’ career development project – training of doctoral students” DOK-2018–09 that is also funded by the Croatian Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings, and con-clusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Croatian Science Foundation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Even though differences have been found between boys’ and girls’ experiences of flow in similar activities [19].

  2. 2.

    The original semantic differential scale with 12 dimensions of flow was produced on the basis of Mayers’ [23] paper focusing on a population of adolescents in the context of their schooling experience.

  3. 3.

    In his original work Mayers [23] focused on flow in adolescents.

  4. 4.

    Curtesy of the lead author [15]. Translation of Ullén et al.’s [15] items into Croatian was pro-vided by Ljubin Golub, Rijavec and Jurčec [3], courtesy of the lead author.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Teacher Education, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

    Kristina Cergol & Petra Karabin

Authors
  1. Kristina Cergol
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  2. Petra Karabin
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kristina Cergol .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Practical Robotics Institute Austria, Vienna, Austria

    Wilfried Lepuschitz

  2. Practical Robotics Institute Austria, Vienna, Wien, Austria

    Munir Merdan

  3. Practical Robotics Institute Austria (PRIA), Vienna, Austria

    Gottfried Koppensteiner

  4. Slovak University of Technology (STU), Bratislava, Slovakia

    Richard Balogh

  5. Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

    David Obdržálek

Appendices

Appendix 1

The English version of the adapted Swedish Flow Proneness Questionnaire (SFPQ) [15].

The following statements refer to the way you feel while working with robots. Please indicate how often you experienced each of the statements. (1 = Never; 2 = Rarely; 3 = Sometimes; 4 = Often; 5 = Always).

While working with robots, how often does it happen that …

1. …you feel bored?

2. …if feels as if your ability to perform what you do completely matches how difficult it is?

3. …you have a clear picture of what you want to achieve, and what you need to get there?

4. …you have a clear picture of what you want to achieve, and what you need to get there?

5. …you feel completely concentrated?

6. …you have a sense of complete control?

7. …what you do feels extremely enjoyable to do?

Appendix 2

The English version of the adapted Flow Scale (12F); ([13]; originally from [23]).

The following statements refer to the way you feel while working with robots. Please indicate how much you can relate to the following statements. (1 = Strongly disagree; 2 = Disagree; 3 = Neither agree nor disagree; 4 = Agree; 5 = Strongly agree).

While working with robots …

1. …I get involved.

2. …I get anxious.

3. …I clearly know what I am supposed to do.

4. …I get direct clues as to how well I am doing.

5. …I feel I can handle the demand of the situation.

6. …I feel self-conscious.

7. …I get bored.

8. …I have to make an effort to keep my mind on what is happening.

9. …I would do it even if I didn’t have to.

10. …I get distracted.

11. …Time passes fast.

12. …I enjoy the experience, and/or the use of my skills.

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Cergol, K., Karabin, P. (2022). Educational Robots and Flow Experience. In: Lepuschitz, W., Merdan, M., Koppensteiner, G., Balogh, R., Obdržálek, D. (eds) Robotics in Education. RiE 2022. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 515. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12848-6_1

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