Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - TUTOR (TUTOR: A universal Learning Management System for Robot-based learning)

Teaser

Innovative tools and pedagogic methods based on ICT are being incorporated in the classrooms in the last years, providing digital native children engaging educational experiences. Nonetheless, these new generations are several steps ahead of classroom and educational systems...

Summary

Innovative tools and pedagogic methods based on ICT are being incorporated in the classrooms in the last years, providing digital native children engaging educational experiences. Nonetheless, these new generations are several steps ahead of classroom and educational systems, concerning technology use. As a result, a strong disassociation is generated between educational actions and students. In the coming years, the “digital divide in education” will become much wider with these new generations familiarized with robotics. The use of robots with age-school and special education needs (SEN) children improves their motivation and learning process by 75%, showing a wide range of applications such as stimulating the cognitive development, practicing Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) program, enhancing creative problem solving techniques or developing sensorial abilities through music or arts,. Furthermore, the use of robots in these fields unleashes untapped potential in school-age children frustrated with traditional learning methodologies.

However, the entrance of robotics for learning (robots used as tools to reinforce children’s learning process in some of the subjects of the curricula: English, History, Maths, etc…) is just emerging, hindered by the fact that professionals from education and rehabilitation fields are not able to create learning contents or therapies to be provided through robots, as there isn’t any comprehensive and truly user-friendly Learning Management Systems (LMS) for Robots available yet.

Aiming at overcoming these barriers, our company InterOnLine has developed TUTOR, which eliminates the need for educators to acquire programming expertise and minimizes the need for technology manufacturers to provide domain specific solutions.

By enrolling the Innovate associate (IA) we aim to:
• Analyse educational standards in robotics in order to optimize educational process.
• Explore our potential capabilities for the design and development of hardware components, in order to develop our own modular robot.

Work performed

\"The work performed during the project implementation as well as the progress achieved and results are listed below regarding:

Educational standards and curriculum has been:

o Developing of learning management system (LMS) based on suitable educational standards are designed to be capable of evaluating the student´s progress in learning process.
o Customized exercises can be now provided with the current LMS
o Participation and monitoring of students outside the school are possible with current LMS.
o Contents of developed LMS are equipped with periodic upgrading of contents based on student’s curriculum.

Regarding Development of hardware components:

o Developed with user-friendly interface or platform according to skill set of secondary level students.
o Basic level programming expertise is only required in few educational robots in accordance with secondary level students.
o Coding option in actual programming languages such as Java, JavaScript or C# behind the Block programming is available with current educational robots suited for secondary grade students.

Finally, in terms of adaptability and mechanical design aspects:

o Easy to configure additional features such as Bluetooth and Mobile apps in presence of low cost.
o Universal set of components is required to enabling the robots for specific tasks.
o Affordable and cost-effective for low level non-government aided private schools.
o External support is not required in the case of two wheeled modular autonomous mobile robot due to inclusion of dynamic balancing algorithm in des.
o Complex control schemes (Eg. Steering mechanism for turning) is not required due to the non-holonomic nature attained by using omni-directional wheel.
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Final results

TUTOR: a user-friendly web system for the creation of educational and therapy contents based on non-conventional forms of interaction, to be supported by all kinds of Robots, and independently of the computer skills of the user.
In the ‘90s, the successful uptake of user-friendly Learning Management Systems (LMS) and the use of standardized educational objects models allowed any user to create and share digital learning units to reinforce students’ education, catalysing the massive introduction of PCs in the schools. Since 2000, with the immense uptake of mobile technologies, schools have added tablets to their list of digital learning tools. Both in the case of PCs and tablets, user-friendly LMSs allowed the massive population of digital learning contents, creating a huge new market of digital learning providers and consumers (LMS market is estimated in €2.20 billion in 2013 to €7.50 billion in 2018, at a CAGR of 25.2%).

By means of TUTOR implementation, we will provoke the same reaction for robot-learning introduction in classrooms, accelerating the uptake and settlement of this market (global education and research robots market was valued at €950 Million in 2014 and is expected to grow at an estimated CAGR of 14.94% between 2015 and 2020).

Website & more info

More info: http://www.interonline.es/index.html.