Programma: Erasmus + KA220-SCH
Coordinatore: Prof. Davide Marocco
SSD: M-PSI/03
Area: 11
Data inizio: 01/02/2022
Data fine: 31/12/2024
Costo totale: € 399.338,00
Quota DSU: € 58.434,00
Ente capofila: Syddansk Universiteit, Odense – Danimarca
Altri partner: Leuphana Universitat Luneburg – Germania; Università degli studi di Napoli Federico II – Italia; Cyprus Computer Society – Lefkosia – Cipro; Fundatia EOS – Educating for an Open Society – Timisoara – Romania; NEC Valsts Izglitibas Satura Centrs – Riga – Lettonia; Blue Ocean Robotics Aps – Odense – Denmark.
Sito del progetto: InClass Project – SDU
Abstract:
The CoVid-19 Pandemic has a considerable impact on education, with much teaching taking place online instead of in the usual classroom settings. But even though children are slowly returning to their classrooms, there are always children who cannot participate because they are in quarantine, are high-risk patients or have other health issues. These kids could be integrated into regular classroom interaction by means of telepresence robots, which are already used occasionally in the case of long-term hospitalization of children (e.g. Soares et al. 2017; Weibel et al. 2020). Telepresence robots allow their operators, i.e. sick or hospitalized children, to participate in classroom interaction with a higher degree of autonomy than if they were simply connected via traditional telecommunication devices. In particular, they can move around, direct their attention to what they choose, can approach classmates and follow the action wherever it takes place. Telepresence robots are therefore a promising technology to integrate children in classroom interactions (e.g. Henry et al. 2020).
Telepresence robots as a means to support high quality inclusive education may potentially allow children with health restrictions a meaningful participation in the classroom, increasing equal opportunity for all. At the same time, telepresence robots may be further used to invite guests from all over Europe into the classroom, expanding children’s knowledge about the lives of European citizens in other countries, overcoming geographic and possibly cultural barriers, while being eco-friendly and promoting not only digital learning mobility but also multilingualism as a means to communicate between children from different countries.
However, while telepresence robots provide many opportunities, a range of practical issues and other obstacles may have to overcome. Currently, a school that decides to offer telepresence robots to its vulnerable children is faced with numerous practical problems, ranging from decision what robot to acquire to serve the current purposes best via potential objections from parents, teachers or administrators, or privacy concerns to lack of knowledge and digital skills – to mention only a few potential issues.
Furthermore, telepresence cannot fully compensate for the lack of embodied co-presence; due to its mediatedness, telepresence is characterized by certain filter effects, such as lower medium richness (e.g. lack of gestures), lower transmission quality and possibly delayed feedback, which may impact interaction quality (Grondin et al. 2019). It cannot be excluded that telepresence robots suffer from equal restrictions. A study by Stoll et al. (2018), for instance, shows that remote collaborators on telepresence robots are trusted less than collocated participants, and the remote participants speak less and find both communication and the task harder. Liu et al. (2007) find fewer empathetic interactions in online meetings compared to those in person, which may also provide indirect evidence for lower interaction quality.
At the same time, the study by Stoll et al. (2018) also shows that changes in the distribution of information between remote and collocated participants can mitigate some of the negative effects of mediatedness and loss of multimodal information. In particular, if remote participants had special information the whole team needed, remote participants talked more and felt that communication and
task were easier. Thus, changes in the way remotely connected children are integrated into classroom activities could potentially have a great impact on their experience. Recommendations as to how to adjust classroom interactions best and how to overcome organizational challenges (such as who turns the telepresence robot on, who ensures that the connection is stable etc., cf. Fitter et al. 2018) facilitate the integration of remote classroom participants and increase the use of the technology for classroom interaction.
Finally, there is reason to expect that changes to the telepresence robot technology could lead to a better user experience. For instance, Rae et al. (2013) found an effect of the height of the robot on how comfortable people felt after the interactions. The perceived size of the robot could likewise have an effect on the ‘perceived weight’ of the remote participant (given the general impact of ‘media equation’;
see Reeves & Nass 1996), and thus help against the bullying of remote participants, such as moving the robot to a different place.
The current project aims to mitigate all these challenges and provide best practice recommendations, addressing the needs of relevant stakeholders at all levels.
In addition, the project will explore how telepresence robots can be used to support intercultural exchange between children from different countries. This part of the project will be supported by Youth and Environment Europe, with whom we will develop teaching material for environmental project work, which can be collaborated on by children from different countries together, where the exchange will be facilitated by telepresence robots