Bridging the Engagement Gap for Distance Students in Resident College Courses Through Telerobotics

Concurrent Session 6

Session Materials

Brief Abstract

Traditional telepresence classrooms are expensive to implement and often require technical and instructional support to successfully translate an instructor's pedagogy. There is often an engagement gap when comparing the level of participation and curiosity exhibited by the distant student and their resident peers. A second issue is that students enrolled in a fully supported telepresent class are often enrolled in other courses that don’t take place in rooms equipped for their needs. Our team is exploring a mix of technologies that will allow distance students to engage with their instructor, peers, and course material in a standard classroom using an inexpensive, portable telerobotics platform. We hope to close the engagement gap by placing these robots among the resident students and in the direct line-of-sight of the instructor thus reducing distraction for the resident students and allowing the instructor to react to non-verbal cues exhibited by the distance students.

Presenters

Lead Presenter: Michael Griffith, University of Arizona

Michael Griffith, MS is the Director of Instructional and Learning Technologies at the University of Arizona's College of Education. As an instructional designer and educational technologist for the College, he works with faculty to improve student engagement and outcomes for online and telepresent courses by designing and building modular learning spaces and researching and adopting technologies to reduce the engagement gap for distance students in resident courses. Mike has taught undergraduate courses in Web development and Human Computer Interaction for the UA and loves taking a day each month to facilitate the STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and math) club at his kids' school.

Additional Authors

Marcus Rosenthal, Revolve Robotics

Marcus Rosenthal is the Co-founder and CEO of Revolve Robotics. Previously Marcus was a co-founder and led the business development for Artificial Muscle that was acquired by Bayer in 2010. Prior to Artificial Muscle, Marcus worked on biologically inspired robots at SRI International. He has a degree in Mechanical Engineering from UC Berkeley, and in his spare time he likes to skateboard, surf, paint, yoga, hike, bike, and do woodworking.

Extended Abstract

Traditional telepresence classrooms are expensive to implement and often require technical and instructional support to successfully translate an instructor's pedagogy into activities that work for both resident and distance students.  Additionally, there is often an engagement gap when comparing the level of participation and curiosity exhibited by the distant student and their resident peers.  Some of that may be from instructors having difficulty in recognizing understanding or questions on the distance students’ faces as a result of the layout of the classroom. 

A second issue is that students enrolled in a fully supported telepresent class are often enrolled in other courses that don’t take place in rooms equipped for their needs. The standard classroom, consisting of a PC, document camera, and ceiling mounted projector is insufficient to support students at a distance since they lack the webcam, microphones, and speakers needed to see and hear the activities in the classroom.  Even when those barriers are overcome, the distant student is then projected on the screen at the front of the room only to be a distraction for their resident peers and behind their instructor.

Our team is exploring a mix of technologies that will allow distance students to engage with their instructor, peers, and course material in a standard classroom using an inexpensive, portable telerobotics platform.  We hope to close the engagement gap by placing these robots among the resident students and in the direct line-of-sight of the instructor thus reducing distraction for the resident students and allowing the instructor to react to non-verbal cues exhibited by the distance students. The winning solution will also put the distance student in control of their own view of the classroom, eliminating the need for an operator and allowing the student to participate in the social exchange before class and during breaks.  The anticipated solution should also allow all students to easily flow from whole class to small group activities and provide a method for the instructor to share and gather content created during the course of the class meeting.