AUGMENTED REALITY FOR TEACHING EDUCATIONAL ROBOTICS ONLINE: DESIGN DECISIONS WITH GROUP CONCEPT MAPPING

Hands-on experiments in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education for experiencing direct effects of actions with tangible educational robotics become challenging when students, teachers and concrete artifacts cannot be in the same place and time during educational activities, or when direct interaction between different actors, resources and materials in real time is not possible. Temporary, improvised solutions developed locally under the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic helped to resolve some pressing bottlenecks in educational domains where interaction with objects and artifacts is essential for learning. Such practices can serve as inspiration for designing new approaches in which face-to-face, online or blended forms of instruction coexist, making education more resilient to unexpected calamities and enriching the repertoire of 21st century teaching and learning.
This paper reports on the initial steps in the development of such an approach, framing it from the theoretical perspectives and elaborating the initial results concerning requirements for the design of instructional solutions for teaching educational robotics (ER) using Augmented Reality (AR).
Within the framework of an Erasmus+ collaboration, researchers from three European research centers together with representatives from primary and secondary schools and a science museum collected input from the target population (primary and secondary school teachers, researchers, technologists and designers) on the desired and expected characteristics of AR-enhanced instructional solutions for teaching ER online. Group Concept Mapping (GCM) methodology was used for this purpose, as it supports the active participation of problem owners and stakeholders in the design process and decision-making.
Six thematic groups or clusters of ideas were distinguished, including ideas on generic educational benefits of combining AR and ER, particularly for STEM learning; ideas on feedback and feedback-related affordances in the context of AR use for ER; ideas on user interaction design; ideas on AR functionalities and hardware; ideas on ER platforms; and conceptual design ideas.
These clusters of ideas represent different perspectives on the question how the teaching of ER can be supported with AR. They inform design in different but complementary ways. Moreover, they reflect the shared views of the stakeholders involved about the potential of using AR to teach ER, and shed light on existing gaps and educational challenges that need to be addressed.