Educational robots for Internet-of-Things supported collaborative learning

We present a vision of using educational robots as smart mobile components (“things”) of Internet-of-Things. Such robots, beside their primary mission to facilitate learning, are able to communicate; have computing capabilities; as well as have sensors and actuators to sense and change their physical context. The robot serves both as the educational service that allows to visualize knowledge through explicit actions and behaviour as well as the enabler of learning and providing student engagement through immersion and instant feedback. The vision is based on the principles of contextualization, physicality and immersion. The pedagogical background is the proposed Internet-of-Things Supported Collaborative Learning (IoTSCL) paradigm based on constructivism, which provides a highly motivating learning environment in university, promoting collaboration among students, and achieving the creation of new knowledge in a reflexive process directed by the teacher. We demonstrate the implementation of the paradigm in the project-based setting at the university course and evaluate it using the Four-Phased Model of Interest Development. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.