Abstract
Humanoid robots can help improve the spatial programming skills of children by making abstract concepts playful, tangible, concrete, and thereby understandable. However, active and critical engagement with robots creates its own challenges, originating from participants or robots. In this study, we explored to what extent programming a humanoid robot is engaging when the robot helps visualize the coding, instructions, and outcome of the process. The results of the study showed that a teaching session before the experiment was helpful, even though participants had previous experience programming with robots. The participants found programming the robot more enjoyable when compared to programming on a PC. They believed that robots could be useful as learning companions under the guidance of a regular teacher to improve their programming skills.
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Mishra, D., Inal, Y., Parish, K., Romero, G.A., Rajbhandari, R. (2023). Exploring Active and Critical Engagement in Human-Robot Interaction to Develop Programming Skills: A Pilot Study. In: Marcus, A., Rosenzweig, E., Soares, M.M. (eds) Design, User Experience, and Usability. HCII 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14033. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35708-4_25
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