Humanoid robots as teaching assistants in an arab school

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Source of Publication

ACM International Conference Proceeding Series

Publication Date

12-2-2019

Abstract

© 2019 Association for Computing Machinery. The proliferation of educational robots has led to an investigation of suitable roles that humanoids robots can take in the classroom. In the recent past, the focus has been on humanoids being used in student focused roles or as peer learners. Coupled with the seemingly absence of any case studies of educational robots in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) or the Arab world, we present a study where we employed the Nao robot as a teaching assistant in a local primary school in Abu Dhabi, UAE. The Nao robot was used to revise a topic in Mathematics and its efficacy in comparison to a human teaching assistant was measured through pre and post test scores, facial expressions and indirect verbal responses. Our results showed that while there no significant differences in test scores, the children were much more engaged when interacting with the Nao robot. We conclude with a positive outlook towards the implementation of humanoid robots in UAE classrooms.

ISBN

9781450376969

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

First Page

462

Last Page

466

Disciplines

Computer Sciences | Education

Keywords

Arab School, Nao, Social Robots, Teaching Assistants

Scopus ID

85078694730

Indexed in Scopus

yes

Open Access

no

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