eLearningworld News from Switzerland
How can engagement in learning be improved for unmotivated students? Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) answer is flip the roles in the classroom and make the student teach, not the teacher, but a robot. The researchers based in Lausanne has from this prerequisite developed a prototype of a humaniod robot called CoWriter. The robot is designed to initially have difficulties to spell and has lousy handwriting, while the student helps it improve these skills. In psychology this is called ‘the protégé effect’ where the student feels responsible when she fails to teach the robot to improve and then helps to identify and correct the robot’s mistakes to help it progress. Source: Reuters