Behavioral patterns of elementary students and teachers in one-to-one robotics instruction

Abstract

Using robotics technologies in education is increasingly common and has the potential to impact students' learning. Educational robotics is a valuable tool for developing students' cognitive and social skills, and it has greatly attracted the interest of teachers and researchers alike, from pre-school to university. The purpose of this study is to understand the behavioral patterns of elementary students and teachers in one-to-one robotics instruction process. The participants were made up of 18 elementary school students and 18 preservice teachers. Quantitative content analysis and lag sequential analysis were used to analyze the student-teacher interactions. According to findings, the students' assembling bricks, sharing ideas and experiences, and the teachers' providing guidance and asking questions were the most frequent behaviors. Regarding behavioral sequences, the teachers' guidance significantly followed the students' behavior of expressing and sharing their ideas that followed the teachers' questions. The students also significantly tended to play with robots that they themselves designed. Moreover, the teacher-student interactions were discussed in detail in terms of gender differences and difficulty level of robotics activities. The results of this study can be taken into consideration in the design of learning environments with robotics activities. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.