During the fall semester of 2010, mechanical engineering students from Edison State Community College and Wright State University shared their skills and knowledge with students from the Upper Valley JVS (UVJVS) pre-engineering technology program in a highly motivating robotics activity. The activity culminated in 47 teams from regional high…

The educational potential of robotics kits as a form of control technology will remain undervalued until meaningful observation parameters are identified to enable a better understanding of children?s control strategies. For this reason, this paper aims primarily to identify and classify the heuristics spontaneously applied by 6-10 year old…

Educational robotics laboratories typically involve building and programming robotic systems to perform particular tasks or solve problems. In this paper we explore the potential educational value of a form of robot-supported educational activity that has been little discussed in the literature. During these activities, primary school children are…

Teaching the fundamentals of robotics to computer science undergraduates requires designing a well-balanced curriculum that is complemented with hands-on applications on a platform that allows rapid construction of complex robots, and implementation of sophisticated algorithms. This paper describes such an elective introductory course where the…

In this review, we focus on research that has used technology to provide cognitive training--i.e. to improve performance on some measurable aspect of behaviour--in individuals with autism spectrum disorders. We review technology-enhanced interventions that target three different cognitive domains: (a) emotion and face recognition, (b) language and…

The paper proposes lab work and student competitions based on the LEGO NXT Mindstorms kits and standard LabVIEW. The goal of this combination is to stimulate design and experimentation with real hardware and representative software in courses where mobile robotics is adopted as a motivating platform to introduce mechatronics competencies. Basic…

Children use goal-directed motion to classify agents as living things from early in infancy. In the current study, we asked whether preschoolers are flexible in their application of this criterion by introducing them to robots that engaged in goal-directed motion. In one case the robot appeared to move fully autonomously, and in the other case it…

Contextualized learning is considered beneficial for student success. In this article, we assess the impact of context-based learning tools on student grade performance in an introductory computer science course. In particular, we investigate two central questions: (1) does the use context-based learning tools, robots and animations, affect…

Previous studies have shown that observing a human model's actions, but not a robot's actions, could induce young children's perseverative behaviors and suggested that children's sociocognitive abilities can lead to perseverative errors ("social transmission of disinhibition"). This study investigated how the social transmission of disinhibition…

The implementation of the distance learning and e-learning in technical disciplines (like Mechanical and Electrical Engineering) is still far behind the grown practice in narrative disciplines (like Economy, management, etc.). This comes out from the fact that education in technical disciplines inevitably involves laboratory exercises and this…

It is well established that several motor areas, called the mirror-neuron system (MNS), are activated when an individual observes other's actions. However, whether the MNS responds similarly to robotic actions compared with human actions is still controversial. The present study investigated whether and how the motor area activity is influenced by…

In recent years, researches had shown that the development of problem solving skill became important for education, and the educational robots are capable for promoting students not only understand the physical and mathematical concepts, but also have active and constructive learning. Meanwhile, the importance of situation in education is rising,…

Affable Reading Tutor (ART) is an online reading lesson designed for children who are starting to comprehend reading. A digital, human-like character (virtual peer) in ART serves as a peer model that demonstrates the use of the reading comprehension strategy called "questioning" to help improve the learners' comprehension of expository…

Advances in technology are enabling dramatic changes in education content, delivery, and accessibility. Throughout history, new technologies have facilitated the exponential growth of human knowledge. In the early twentieth century, the focus was on the use of radios in education. But since then, innovators have seen technology as a way to improve…

In this article, the authors discuss how educators can engage students in real world learning using their academic knowledge and technical skills. They describe how school districts have discovered that the world of robotics can help students use technical skills to solve simulated problems found in the real world, while understanding the…