Abstract
This paper presents a study conducted in a United Kingdom primary school with the Maqueen BBC micro:bit robot. The purpose was to explore whether easy-to-fix hardware issues affected the children’s perception of the robot or their enjoyment of the session, and whether the children could cope with these failures and/or repair them. As with any piece of technology, robots break down and are in regular need of reparation, but this technical issue could be a disadvantage in a classroom setting, as it might impact the children’s enjoyment and confidence in their abilities to carry out the given task; potentially this could deter teachers from using this technology. 128 children participated in this study, aged 7 to 12 years old (M=9,18; SD=1,061). While children did perceive robots to be faulty less times than the faults were present in the robots, they did consider themselves capable of solving these issues and enjoyed doing so. Their perception of a faulty robot also did not impact significantly in their enjoyment nor in their consideration of the robot as a machine or a friend.
| Original language | English |
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| Title of host publication | Page 1 of 5 Licence to Publish Proceedings Papers Licensee Springer Nature Switzerland AG (the ‘Licensee’) Title of the Proceedings Volume/Edited Book or Conference Name: Robotics in Education: Proceedings of the RiE 2023 conference |
| Editors | Richard Balogh, David Obdržálek, Eftychios Christoforou |
| Publication status | Accepted/In press - 2023 |