Keywords

1 Introduction

This study aims to break glass wall of genders gap of the science education by adapting smart textile (e-Textile) and interactive devices such as media to create tool-kits. We design the programs to evaluate the facilities and effectiveness of this workshop. The Maker Movement and STEAM education prevailed and gathered more different types of creators to build their original prototypes, as well as the development of new products and services. However, interactive curriculum and programs are mostly imitation of the robot, which is still being defined by the boy’s activities. We are facing the pressing issue of a declining birthrate and aging population. Providing the suitable subjects for women to learn science and contribute their ability for the society has become an urgent issue.

The motivation of this project is to find the preference tools for enabling non-engineers staff - especially young girls - to generate interest in science and technology. The research is to make use of the application of smart textiles and interactive elements to develop soft and flexible tool-kits to be used in interaction designed learning. 15 male and 15 female were invited to be the research subjects. There are robots made by textiles with no face and costumes, in the meantime, knowledge of circuit were digital printed on the surface of the robot and programing skills were also introduced in the interaction design workshop. In the class, students were encouraged to make their own specific face look simply by hand drawing and applied in sewing embroidery techniques. From this soft robot prototype, the circuit and programming knowledge were taught to control the behaviors by adapting the interaction tool-kits. The prototypes developed by participants were used as research materials to evaluate how interactive science and technology concepts were interpreted by the tool-kits provided. This research results help to understand the criteria of female friendly creative experience in the field of interactive science and technology.

Project is divided into three parts:

  1. 1.

    Case study: Evaluation of Smart textile (E-Textiles) or Wearable Technology Projects that are acceptable to apply in girls’ robot classroom. 150 questionnaires were distributed which include both genders. The result shows that both girls and boys are interesting in this topic but think that the programming is the most difficult part of developing similar projects.

  2. 2.

    Developing of the tool-kits: Base on the result of case study, sensors (pressure, heart rate, touching, bending) and reactors of smart textiles (heating pad, heating fiber, LED yarns, sound) were used and introduced. Teaching materials were prepared and tested to facilitate the applying process.

  3. 3.

    Experience Modules: verification test included the benefits and disadvantages of these teaching tools, and the tendency of the function and shape adapted between both genders. A final prototype was suggested to increase the interest of women to learn science and involve in STEAM education.

2 Literature Research

Robot for the learners is mainly inspired by their concepts of programming and computing. Let them know the so-called intelligent world is by sensing the input data to create the output behavior and control. Fabrics are readily available as long as the needle and thread are on the hand. They do not need complicate machine for industrial production e.g. plastic injection. Compared to the blockish robot teaching aids such as LEGO blocks, little Bits and other types of interactive educational building blocks, textiles are closer to the concept of wearing technology, and mobility in daily life.

Smart textiles have often reminiscent those can deliver exceptional performance with light, sound, electricity, input and feedback. They were also commonly defined as detection of physiological signals, mood changes, and feedback information to the controller to determine what is the reaction on the textiles.

2.1 Smart Textiles, e-Textiles from Taiwan Textiles Industry

Smart Textiles are able to sense stimuli from the environment, to react and adapt to them by integration of functionalities in the textile structure. The stimulus as well as the response can have an electrical, thermal, chemical, magnetic or other origin. The Smart Textiles or E-Textiles usually contain both sensing and feedback components. It can sense, test and collect information about people or the environment, such as body temperature or human action. Output through the shining light, temperature changes, image display and other feedback electronic message transmission allow users to feel the situation changes. Smart Textiles, due to the characteristics of sensing and feedback, is different from the general fabric, but also because of the softness is different from electric plastic product. Specific textiles can replace the hard circuit, or show the light and temperature feedback.

The extent of intelligence can be divided in three subgroups:

  • Passive smart textiles can only sense the environment, they are sensors;

  • Active smart textiles can sense the stimuli from the environment and also react to them, besides the sensor function, they also have an actuator function;

  • Finally, very smart textiles have the gift to adapt their behavior to the circumstances (Dadi 2010).

Basically, 5 functions can be distinguished in an intelligent suit, namely: Sensors‚ Data processing‚ Actuators‚ Storage‚ Communication (Van Langenhove and Hertleer 2004). When study wearable technology, Smart-Textiles are essential elements to be considered, which incorporates elements of design and fashion and thus it is more gender-neutral than robotics. It is also caters to a much broader range of children’s social goals and desire for self-expression (Lau and Ngai 2009).

Using textiles to design a robot could be an interesting combinations of contradictions. We began by surveying the adaptable and accessible smart textiles material in Taiwan to make sure the following production without any doubt which mostly from Taiwan Textile Research Institute (TTRI 2011) and textile industry (‬Chen 2012). Even though those textiles are not defined as “Smart Textiles”, but we found that it is quite useful in the idea development as shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Achievements and materials of Taiwan smart textiles
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2.2 Robot, Puppet, and Textiles

A review of Arduino, a popular robotics toolkit, revealed female designers constituted less than 1% of users (Buechley and Hill 2010). By contrast, crafting, sewing, and other textile design communities attract disproportionate numbers of girls and women (Buechley 2013). Often, we are unaware of the subtle gendered messages that accrue in tools and materials over long histories of use. For example, LEGO bricks and robotics are marketed to and often used by boys. By contrast, crafting kits and fabrics are marketed to and often used by girls (Buchholz et al. 2014). In this study, we examined the combination of robot made by Textiles (Soft Robot as shown in this paper) and apply in a class to see the acceptability and difference between two genders.

In the gender-bending world, is it possible not to divide the gender by learning technology with bricks but textiles? This study addresses the question by developing a soft robot prototype to test three hypotheses: (i) girls like robot, (ii) boys like textile, and (iii) boys and girls have the same ability to learn technology.

Since this research aim to blend gender in one classroom, then there is a question some might ask, why puppet-like robot? Not fashion Clothes or accessory? Dr. Bromfield affiliated with Harvard Medical School mentioned, “By standing in for real people, puppets allow a child to displace feelings from the significant persons with whom they were originally connected. In doing so, puppets offer physical and psychological safety that, in turn, invites greater self-expression. For example, a child can express aggression or love toward a puppet without the risk of actual retaliation or rejection. Although a child still imagines and experiences uncomfortable psychic repercussions, she cannot be assaulted or abandoned by a puppet (Bromfield 1995).

Puppetries (finger puppets, small puppets and marionettes) are common within Waldorf schools because they are a living play imbued with inner imagination and fantasy. Puppet shows draw the child into a story, watching it unfold step by step, grow and change, and these pictures are taken right into the stream of life forces, without creating hard and fixed impressions. The draw forth from children their imagination and allow the story to take them where they need to do as far as the inner life working pictures (Homeschoolers and Waldorf 2012). Waldorf School teachers tell stories gently and use puppets without facial expression while they are leading a story-telling instrument. In order to bring up children’s imagination, they seldom express their own opinions toward the stories (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1.
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(Source: Study of this research)

Use puppets without facial expression.

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2.3 Stem + Art

STEAM is an interdisciplinary structure that combines science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics to enable students to learn on the basis of mathematical logic, engineering and art. STEAM education, such as 3D printing, Arduino micro controllers, robots and other cool technology are loved by both boys and girls. It would be helpful for them to increase their interest in science and technology learning. Kylie Peppler (Peppler 2013) mentioned to broaden STEM participation in youth communities leverage e-textiles as an alternative approach to computing education. Recent findings indicate that introducing such novel, cross-disciplinary technologies can broaden participation, particularly woman. This STEAM (STEM + art) powered approach also improves learning outcomes and thus has ramifications that extend beyond the issue of gender in computing.

The contrary between LEGO bricks and robotics and Smart-Textiles crafting kits and fabrics are like “laborsaving” V.S. “entertainment”. “Much of the foundational rhetoric concerning technology portrays it in terms of saving labor, avoiding presumed drudgery through automation, or making tasks easier and faster… Another common rhetorical theme is the view of technology as a source of entertainment or distraction… Both these rhetorical traditions in turn dictate specific themes for the study of interaction: the “laborsaving” tradition stresses themes such as rapid (and error free) use, ease of learning, and improved productivity, while the “entertainment” tradition stresses (again) ease of learning, holding the user’s attention, comparative preferences between different entertainment technologies, and so forth.” (Buechley et al. 2008).

How to adapt ‘ART’ in the Robot class is an important issue during the development of the soft robot. Fabrics easily absorb pigments that facilitate the creativity. In this study, we intergrade the digital embroidery technique that allows students to draw without worrying about their sewing and embroidery skill to get beautiful result to decorate their robots’ outlook.

2.4 Gender + Icon

Any agent desiring to seamlessly operate in a social manner will need to incorporate this type of core human behavior. As in human interaction, myriad aspects of a humanoid robot’s appearance and behavior can significantly alter its persuasiveness this work will focus on one particular factor: gender (Siegel 2009). The signs identifying public toilets are some of the most common images existing cross-culturally in the contemporary era. More often toilets signs represent users, differentiated into men and women, which I consider to be an iconic function (Ciochetto 2003) (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2.
figure 2

(Source: Depositphotos.com)

Toilet sign.

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For the soft robot in the Girls’ Robot Class, we redesign this toilet sign to represent the gender factor.

3 Process

Preliminary research trial tested by design department students showed us that Arduino programming was too difficult as they tend to get bogged down with syntactic mistakes which got into the way of them actually learning programming concepts. Therefore, we develop the modules into three different levels.

3.1 Course Contents

One of the biggest attractions of using robotics or wearable computing in educational computing is the tangible factor. Buechley argues that the use of physical materials in a learning task enhances absorption of concepts and knowledge more readily than if purely virtual objects are used. From experience, students derive a greater sense of reward and satisfaction when successfully constructing a physical object as compared to constructing a virtual one. (Ngai et al. 2010). Table 1 presents the syllabus of our girls’ robot course, which consists of five levels, with one to two set tasks per level. The set tasks serve, as mini-checkpoints to make sure that the students have understood the course contents presented in that particular level. The learning outcomes of each level are also listed in the Table 2.

Table 2. Girls Robot course contents.
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3.2 Digital Printing Prototype

To support this Girl’s robot course, we also designed 3 modules of circuit layout specifically for learning program in one clothes version. This clothes version was provided to the students as teaching tools to construct circuits which support the teaching tool-kits of electronics devices and the instructions already. Stripes made of conductive wire provide the backbone for the circuit. The circuit diagrams used in electronic circuit theory were drawn. This allows the students not to worry about connective and conductive issues when constructing their circuits, and makes the learning and trial-error process quicker and more enjoyable (Table 3).

Table 3. One Robot with three interactive modules to express different behaviors: (1) Angel in the dark. (2) Yoga to the extreme. (3) Devil’s Advocate.
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This prototype design by the following requirements:

  1. 1.

    The use of electrical wires, plastic insulation, and solder are avoided or kept at a minimum.

  2. 2.

    To allow students to learn the basic fundamentals without having to be concerned about material imperfections (such as overly-high resistances), the performance of these materials would also need to be as close to their electrical equivalents as possible.

  3. 3.

    The interface would have to be usable to the beginner users without much skills in either sewing or soldering.

  4. 4.

    The graphic on the fabric should support active and hands-on learning and iterative construction and design.

  5. 5.

    It should encourage trial-and-error experiments among its users by allowing quick and iterative assembly of a diverse variety of electronic components, including different microprocessors.

3.3 Interactive Modules and Electronic Circuit Theory

The Lilypad Arduino (Doctorow 2010), is designed for wearable computing and e-textiles, being small and washable. We used the Lilypad as the “brain” of the soft robot, which provided a platform for the students to learn how to program the three different interactive robotics programs especially for beginner students (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3.
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Electronic circuit theory.

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When we were making the prototype of soft robot, we felt that there needed to be easier way to attach input and output devices on the textiles and connect to the conductive wire. From the previous research, we have developed soft power switch (Chen 2014). Another suitable components of bending sensors, vibrators and speakers and microphone were re-designed for adapting on textiles. Working with this redesign devices and sensors gave students an opportunity of testing what would be possible with the other options and also allowed them to experiment with logical problems that exercised and tested their grasp of concepts (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4.
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Components and layout.

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This study found that youth who engaged in e-textile design demonstrated significant gains in their ability to diagram a working circuit, as well as significant gains in their understanding of current flow, polarity and connection (Peppler and Glosson 2013).

3.4 Digital Embroidery and Sewing Techniques

This process is about the artistic envisioning of material science. Students were asked to drawing or took a face photo to create their own robot look. The face of the robot was scanned and saved as .jpg file and applied in the software (Pre-Design for embroidery machine) that participants can digitize designs manually or use embroidery offset feature, which creates unique effect such as Auto-punch and Cross Stitch functions (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5.
figure 5

The process of applying digital embroidery.

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4 Evaluation

To evaluate whether our workshop and tool-kits design achieved our aims, we wants to investigate along three angles. First, we wanted to see whether this soft robot class was interesting and inspiring to both the boys and the girls. Second, we wanted to know whether the workshop had helped to simulate the student’s imagination and to exercise their creativity. Third, we need to see whether they had indeed gained some knowledge about technological and programming concepts.

Our evaluations were performed using surveys and feedback from the students and instructors. To gauge the difference that the workshop created, we used both a pre-course and a post-course survey for the students. We also interviewed them as well as the instructors to get the students’ feeling as to whether they were inspired by the course and how they felt about the level of difficulty of the tasks. The final project also afforded us the opportunity to see how well the workshop allowed the participants to exercise the creativity.

4.1 Surveys

The survey focuses on the interest subject of the students. Table 4 presents the survey questions. The soft robot prototype and the interaction module were presented by power point before the class. Although we had only budget for 30 participants to provide the research material (the soft robot prototype and the interactive devices), the other students are free to choose the material either with the soft robot or develop by their own concept in this class. Finally, There are 159 respondents. Both boys and girls had high percentage interest in Smart-Textiles subjects before they applied to the workshop. However, when asked to evaluate their self-perceived programming knowledge, boys have 67% and girls have 75% feel that they did not know much about programming. It was not surprising to us that twice the number of girls showed more confidant in sewing techniques than boys, but the difficulty level are below 36%. Personal conversations further confirmed the fact that even thought the subject looks feminine, but because it is related to electronic and programming, they still feel that the subject is cool as shown in Table 4.

Table 4. Summary of survey data (F represent as Female; and M as Male)
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5 Conclusions and Future Works

The Girls Robot Class is composed of three different workshops that took place in Ming Chuan University. From interviews with participants’ opinions, we had gotten response that Level 1 (Angel in the dark) is possible for elementary students from grade 5–12, boys and girls. This is going to be the next stage of research experiment. Overall, The class has the following features:

  1. 1.

    Gender bending

  2. 2.

    Personals expression and aesthetically compelling possibilities.

  3. 3.

    Multidiscipline Learning

We designed another survey questionnaire as shown in Table 5 that is more specific to individual module. The factors to analyze students’ works and instructors’ feedback were studied as shown for the time being.

Table 5. Revised version of survey questionnaire (F represent as Female; and M as Male)
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