The landscape of robots in education has continued to change since
the 2005 RSS
Robotics Education Workshop. Over the last two years, there has
been a noticeable spike in interest in the use of robots in
education. For example: robots are discussed as platforms for
education at leading conferences and workshops such as SIGCSE and AAAI;
Universities are integrating robots into their classrooms; Robot-
centered competitions like FIRST, BotBall and RoboCup continue to flourish. Industry
is interested as well: iRobot recently announced the Roomba Create; LEGO has
updated their popular Mindstorms robot; And leading
companies including Google, Intel and Microsoft have funded a variety
of university projects in computer science education, including a
multi-million dollar center.
What is the basis for this excitement? What is the evidence that
robots in the classroom advance education? The focus of this workshop
is to provide a venue for presentation of the research supporting (or
contradicting) the effectiveness of robots in education, and to help
shape future research in this area.
In particular, the workshop will explore how robots are used
differently as educational tools, in terms of hardware, software,
pedagogy, and assessment, in different disciplines (e.g. ME, EE, CE
and CS) and why certain types of robots may be more effective for
different purposes. As an example, many teachers take a
constructionist approach in which students build their own robots,
while others provide students with a working platform that they should
not change.
The workshop will also explore new curricula and robot platforms
and the research behind them. The objective of this workshop is to
re-evaluate the state of the art of robotics education and discuss how
to continue the broad adoption of tools and materials in the
classroom. As part of this discussion, we will explore what areas
remain unsolved, and which are immediately available for realistic
use. Moreover, we hope to create a community beyond
the workshop for future exchange of ideas.
