Abstract
Based on a ‘learning by playing’ concept, a basic arithmetic learning task was extended with an engaging game to achieve long-term educational interaction for children. Personalization was added to this learning task, to further support the child’s motivation and success in learning. In an experiment, twenty children (aged 9-10) interacted three times, spread over days, with a robot using the combined imitation and arithmetic game to test this support. Two versions of the robot were implemented. In one implementation the complexity of the arithmetic progressed towards a predefined group target. In the other version the assignments increased in complexity until a personal end level was reached. A subsequent free-choice period showed that children’s motivation to play (and learn) was high, particularly when the game progressed to a personal target. Furthermore results show that most children in the last condition reach higher levels compared to the predefined group level.
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Janssen, J.B., van der Wal, C.C., Neerincx, M.A., Looije, R. (2011). Motivating Children to Learn Arithmetic with an Adaptive Robot Game. In: Mutlu, B., Bartneck, C., Ham, J., Evers, V., Kanda, T. (eds) Social Robotics. ICSR 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 7072. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-25504-5_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-25504-5_16
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