PRE2017 3 Groep8

Important Links

• Planning
• Google Drive folder (read only)
• Coaching Questions Group 8

Information about ideation

Problem Statement and objectives

The Netherlands is currently dealing with a shortage of teachers in both primary and secondary education. In secondary education, the shortages are most prevalent in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) field. The shortage of teachers is likely to persevere due to a decrease in the popularity of pursuing a teaching career caused by the low salaries and high workload of the job (Kan & van Eekelen, 2017).

The Netherlands is not the only country dealing with teacher shortages, the United Kingdom and the United states are coping with the same issues. In the United Kingdom there is an increase in the number of teachers leaving the profession for non-retirement reasons, as well as an increase in the number of secondary school pupils that is expected to last until 2025 (Syal, 2018). In the United States drastic strategies, including hiring teachers with no formal training, are being employed to try to fill the gaps caused by the teacher shortages (Papay, Bacher-Hicks, Page & Marinell, 2018).

In order to decrease the workload of teachers, and maybe even decrease the need for teachers, we will review the possibilities of applying flow theory in education. Apart from reviewing the possibilities, we will also model an assistant that can aid in improving the rate at which students learn new material. The assistant that we will model will focus on teaching elementary school and high school mathematics.

The objectives of this project are:

• To gain insight into the current state of robotics in education.
• To gain insight into the possibilities of robotics in education in the coming 10 years.
• To evaluate the ethical aspects of the use of robotics in education.
• To develop a teaching assistant/learning system that can apply the knowledge acquired concerning teaching methods in a learning system for 1st- to 3rd-grade students.
• To make effective use of the seven principles of good practice in education in the learning system.

Who are the users?

The robotics technology which we will research focuses on improving the quality of education, as such the primary users who will interact with such a system are elementary and highschool students. The personalised learning assistant which we propose will gather data regarding the performance of students in order to personalise their curriculum. Considering this system will be a new facet of education, it will have to be integrated in the existing logistics of schools. For instance, teachers should be able to review the performance of students.

What are the user requirements?

For the students it is important that the level of questions is at the correct level for them. If the questions are too easy they will get bored and if the questions are too difficult they will get demotivated.

For the teachers it is important to have insights into the results of their students so that they can judge the progress of their students.

Both for teachers and students it is important that the user interface of the assistant is clear. For students it needs to be clear what they are expected to do, and feedback needs to be provided when they submit a wrong answer. For teachers it should be easy to judge the progress of their students.

The most important requirement for the management of a school is that the assistant can be integrated into the current style of education that is provided at the school. This means that the assistant should be highly adaptive so that it can be adjusted to the specific needs of the specific schools it is implemented in.

Approach, milestones and deliverables

The group will be divided in parts. One part will focus on creating the report and making suggestions and recommendations for implementation in the learning system. The other part will focus on developing the teaching assistant.

The team will first create a minimal usable product, which implements all requirements of the user. After this milestone is reached, the system will be tested and suggestions for improvement will be made. These will be implemented in the second (final) phase, which forms our second milestone.

The team sets out to create three deliverables:

• A report detailing our findings on the application of flow theory in education, and recommendations for applying this knowledge in new services and devices.
• A working prototype; a personal assistant or learning system which enables personalised learning.
• A presentation in which the aforementioned report is discussed and the prototype is presented.

Who does what?

In general group 8 works in a shared google drive folder (see important links). Our planning is specified in a seperate file in the google drive folder. This planning document specifies for each task who is responsible and the required timeframe in which the tasks need to be completed. The are also some reoccurring tasks that are assigned to a group member. Please note that this wiki will be updated weekly to reflect the final state of the google drive folder 18 hours before the weekly meeting.

• E-mail (responsible for e-mail contact with lecturers): Wouter
• Wiki updater (responsible for updating the wiki on time): Mitchell
• Secretary (responsible for taking notes of feedback sessions): Nikki

References

1. Kan, A.R. & Eekelen, I. van (2017, November 29). Lerarentekort urgenter dan ooit [Shortage of teachers more urgent than ever]. NRC. Retrieved from https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2017/11/30/lerarentekort-urgenter-dan-ooit-a1583070
2. Papay, J.P., Bacher-Hicks, A., Page, L.C., Marinell, W.H. (2018, January 9) America’s teacher shortage can’t be solved by hiring more unqualified teachers. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/01/09/americas-teacher-shortage-cant-be-solved-by-hiring-more-unqualified-teachers/?utm_term=.7ec98bd8787e
3. Syal, R. (2018, January 30). Teacher shortage leaves English schools in crisis, watchdog says. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jan/31/teacher-shortage-leaves-english-schools-in-crisis-watchdog-says

SotA: Summary of literature study

We conducted a literature study in order to gain a better understanding of concepts relevant to our problem statement. We identified several topics which we deemed interesting. This summary of the literature study focussess on five distinct topics.

Flow theory and education

Karen Wesson & Ilona Boniwell (2007) describe flow in the following way: Being ‘in flow’ or ‘in the zone’ enables individuals to focus on tasks more fully and to maximise performance . They describe conditions that should be met to get people in flow as well as ways to meet these in the context of coaching. Their list of conditions is as follows.

1. Having clear goals
2. Balancing challenge and skill
3. Importance placed on doing well in an activity
4. maintaining goal congruence
5. Receiving clear and immediate feedback
6. Increasing autonomy
7. Increasing absorption

Sheehan & Katz (2012) apply flow theory to physical education. They mention Csikszentmihalyi’s (1975) eight elements which they describe as follows:

1. Balance between the difficulty of an activity and an individual’s proficiency. Is there an achievable perceived challenge?
2. Apparent goals. Is there a clear objective that distinguishes pertinent from immaterial information?
3. Immediate feedback. Is there personalized feedback being received in a timely manner?
4. The harmony of action and awareness. Is there awareness of what’s happening without thinking about the need for this awareness?
5. Focused concentration. Is the person able to concentrate on a limited stimulus field?
6. Decreased self- consciousness. Is there awareness of internal processes and less emphasis on one’s self image (while maintaining a sense of their physical reality)?
7. Perception of Control. Is the person capable of adequately achieving the prescribed task and less concerned about perfection?
8. Decreased awareness of time. Is there a feeling that the importance of time is diminished (losing track of time)

Rodríguez-Ardura and Meseguer-Artola (2017) analysed the way flow relates to other constructs such as challenge and Control in the context of e-learning, this is done using a questionnaire distributed among the students of an established pure-online University. This analysis could teach us both what is needed to achieve flow as well as what the benefits to achieving flow are.

Ghan & Deshpande (1994) propose a model to examine the optimal flow in human-computer interaction, this could tell us which aspects are more important for reaching optimal flow. This paper also studies the impact of task scope which is the motivating potential of a job. It is noteworthy that this paper is from a time where human-computer interaction was relatively new.

Education by human teachers

A large-scale initiative to develop more efficient teaching methods in the USA called Follow Through resulted in the development of the Direct Instruction (DI) teaching model, as well as a monitoring method called Precision Teaching (PT) (Moran & Malott, 2004).

DI aims to improve learning outcomes by increasing clarity in the learning process (Kider & Carnine, 1991). On top of that, DI’s strongest focus is on repetition and continuous practice. At the beginning of the program, students are tested to determine their current skill level, and are then placed in groups of students with the same skill level. Only 10% of each lesson is new material, the rest is repetition and practice of previous study material (National Institute for Direct Instruction (2018).

In PT, the teacher has more of a guiding role and the students reflect on themselves more (Lindsley, 1992). The learning curve is monitored using a so-called Standard Celeration Chart (SCC), which allows comparison of the learning curve of different students for the same task, or comparison of different tasks for the same student. This is thanks to the standard format for the SCC, in addition to the logarithmic scale which allows many numbers to be compared in their own order of magnitude (FHSS Information Architect, 2017). Both methods have given promising results, also on long term after following regular teaching for several years (Becker & Gersten, 1982)(Gersten, Keating & Becker, 1988). The combination of the two has also been shown to have a positive effect on the learning process (Binder & Watkins, 1990).

Current state of educational robotics

The main focus of current educational robotics is on education in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). When focusing on the educational applicability of robots, we find that, currently, the most commonly used robots in education are those that can be used to teach students programming and mechanical design (Ben-Ari & Mondada, 2018).

Current educational robotics is, however, not limited to robots that are operated by students, there are already examples of the use of ‘social’ robots in education. Sharkey (2016) divides the current ‘social’ educational robots into four categories: (i) robots as classroom teachers, (ii) robots as companions and peers, (iii) robots as care-eliciting companions, and (iv) telepresence robot teachers.

Educational robots that act as peers or companions have already been used for several years. Already in 2009, it was shown that autonomous robots had the ability to improve vocabulary skills in toddlers (Movellan, Eckhardt, Virnes & Rodriquez, 2009). More recently, robotic classroom teachers became reality. RoboThespian is a life-sized humanoid robot that taught elementary school science classes in an experiment that was initiated in 2011. The results of the experiment show that it is already possible for a robot to teach elementary school science (Polishuk & Verner, 2017). Despite these results, humanoid robots in education are still expected to be great challenge in the robotics field in the coming years (TechNavio, 2018).

While educational robotics keeps advancing, it is still unclear to what extent robots can be used in the classroom. Sharkey (2016) notes that, while telepresence and companion robots in education are likely to appear in educational settings in the coming years, actual robot teachers are not likely to be replacing humans in the near future. This same conclusion is reached by Reich-Stiebert and Eyssel (2016) after a study of the expectations and attitudes of teachers towards educational robots.

Gamification

Deterding et al. (2011) aim to investigate the origins of gamification and how it relates to serious games, pervasive games, alternate reality games and playful design. The paper suggests that gamified applications provide insight into new gameful phenomena that complement playful phenomena. The definition of gamification that is agreed upon states that gamification entails the use of game design elements in non-game contexts. Gamification is a new term for an older phenomenon, several precursors and parallels exist. Already in the early 1980’s (Deterding et al., 2011, p.2) research was performed in HCI to redress routine work using game elements.

Hamari et al. (2014) performed a literature study of peer-reviewed empirical studies on gamification. Their aim was to create a framework for examining the effects of gamification using definitions of gamification and motivational affordances. The paper gives insight in the experiments performed in the peer reviewed studies. Hamari and Huotari stress that gamification should invoke the same psychological experiences that games invoke. Deterding on the other hand argues that affordances in gamified systems should be the same ones that are used in games. The studies that were included in the literature review used (one/some of the) following motivational affordances: points, leaderboards, achievements/badges, levels, story/theme, clear goals, feedback, rewards, progress, and challenge. The majority of studies focused on education/learning, intra-organizational systems, and work. But there were also studies on commerce, health/exercise, sharing, sustainable consumption, innovation/ideation, and data gathering. The paper concludes that gamification does appear to work, but that there are caveats. Quantitative research concluded that positive effects only existed in part of the considered relationships between gamification and the studied outcomes. Qualitative research showed that there may be underlying confounding factors that influence the effectiveness of gamification. The authors also state that more rigorous methodologies ought to be used in further research. The suggestions they give may be of use for our project in 0LAUK0.

In Deterding (2012), various views on gamification are presented by people involved in industries were gamification is relevant. Judd Antin, a social psychologist in the Internet Experiences research group at Yahoo! Research, remarks that gamification is a positive trend in that it signals a shift away from pecuniary and instrumental rewards. When done right, gamification can make use of powerful social psychological processes, such as self-efficacy, group identification and social approval to aid long term performance. Unfortunately many modern applications of gamification lack the ability to account for differences in individuals and contexts. Elizabeth Lawley, professor of interactive games and media and founder and director of the Lab for Social Computing at Rochester Institute of Technology argues as well that modern applications of gamification reduce well-designed games to their simplest components. These implementations may fail to engage players, but they might also damage existing interest or engagement with the service or product. She worked on “Just Press Play”, an achievement system for students in interactive games and media at the Rochester Institute of Technology. This system may be relevant for our study for 0LAUK0. Rajat Paharia, founder and chief product officer of Bunchball, describes in his section how his company designs gamified systems. He stresses the importance of context, and that for gamification to work, the goal that is gamified needs to have a core intrinsic value.

Lawley (n.d.) reflects on issues that the first version of “Just Press Play” suffered from (see also Deterding, 2012). Just Press Play is a gamified system designed at Rochester Institute of Technology, meant to help new students find their way around campus and to get them out of their comfort zone to partake in the university’s activities. Just Press Play is an achievement system, the original version used achievements based on internal system triggers (e.g. completing the tutorial), administratively assigned achievements (e.g. a certain percentage of the class manages to finish a difficult course), user submitted content (e.g. photos of things around the campus), collectible cards with a special code on it, and RFID keychains that can be used to receive credit for attending events. Due to technical issues the collectible cards and RFID keychains did not work out properly. In the second version of Just Press Play, RFID tags were replaced with QR code stickers that students can place on (for instance) their campus card or phone, which they can scan at events. Collectible cards are printed offsite and distributed to students after they unlock an achievement. Since the original cards were very popular, there are plans to make a card game using these cards. Privacy aspects and stability of the system was improved, and the categorization of the achievements was modified, as such there are now achievement quadrants (create, learn, socialize, explore).

Nicholson (2015) describes six concepts (Reflection, Exposition, Choice, Information, Play, and Engagement) to help designers implement gamification in a meaningful way. Gamification can help users find personal connections, thereby motivating engagement. Nicholson argues that reward-based gamification (akin to operant conditioning) can lead to short-term improvements, but other game-based elements should be used to facilitate long-term change. He also argues that gamification should not be permanent. Reward-based gamification can be used to ease a user into a certain task, meaningful gamification can be used to strengthen the behavior, but eventually the user will get bored of the gamified system. As such gamification should be designed to ease the user into the real world context of the task.

In Huang et al. (2013), gamification in education is discussed. It is stated that gamification is a specific application of “nudging”. A five-step process is discussed that can help in making a gamified system:

1. Understanding the target audience and context
2. Defining learning objectives
3. Structuring the experience
4. Identifying resources
5. Applying gamification elements

In understanding the target audience and context it is also important to take into account the length of the learning program, where the program is conducted (class room/at home), if students work in groups (and how large these groups are). There are several common pain points in education that need to be considered:

• Focus: younger students are more easily distracted.
• Skills: students may be demotivated to try when the task is to difficult, the student lacks the skills or knowledge required to complete the task.
• Physical, mental and emotional factors: fatigue, hunger, or emotions are factors that can affect a student’s learning abilities or other pain points.
• Motivation: young adults and adolescents commonly lack motivation.
• Pride: adults may believe they already know what is being taught, they may also choose to study material that is well above their skill/knowledge level. This issue may also occur when the instructor is younger than the students.
• Learning environment and nature of the course: this pain point consists of properties of the course, such as class size and structure of the program.

The paper discusses in an example how a math class can be structured such that gamification could be applied to it, this is very relevant regarding our project in 0LAUK0. Furthermore, a distinction is made between push and complete, where complete entails understanding the concepts in each stage, and push entails the motivation to go to the next stage. Lastly, Huang et al. (2013) also categorizes game mechanics in self-elements and social elements:

Examples of game mechanics, from Huang et al. (2013, p. 14)

Self-elements (complete stage)	Social elements (push stage)
Points	Leaderboards
Levels	Virtual Goods
Trophies/badges	Interactive cooperation
Virtual goods	Storyline
Storyline	-
Time restrictions	-
Aesthetics	-

Arnold (2014) discusses in his paper among other things Bartle’s four basic categories of gamer, and how these categories are (mis)used in gamification. When making a gamified system it is important to notice that not all gamer categories like the same game elements (e.g. socializers do not care for leaderboards).

• Socializers: more interested in having relations with the other players than playing the game.
• Achievers: competitive and enjoy beating challenges.
• Killers: provoke and cause drama in the scope of the virtual world.
• Explorers: like to explore the geography of the world as well as the mechanics of the game.