IGARA: A Proposal for a Pedagogical Approach to Apply Educational Robotics through Collaborative Learning
Joethe Moraes de Carvalho, José Francisco de Magalhães Netto · 2021 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) · 2021
This Research Full Paper presents a proposal for a pedagogical approach to be applied to educational robotics on a virtual distance learning platform, to foster teaching and learning, knowledge sharing and interaction between teachers and students. Recent studies indicate that 21st century students can master different skills and competencies to achieve success in their education, among which we highlight collaborative learning and educational robotics. One of the resources which successfully employ collaborative activities is groupware, which is a virtual collaborative system that supports groups of people with common tasks or objectives and enables the management of group activities. Many research works show that educational robotics has become an important facilitating and motivating tool for students entering Computer-focused courses. Literature has shown that both tools are important for the application of a STEM approach and have led to good results in an educational environment. To analyse the learning perceptions of educational robotics in a collaborative environment, we have developed a pedagogical approach that relies on collaborative learning through a groupware called IGARA, developed on Moodle platform. Activities made available by the virtual environment were developed based on constructivist, interactionist principles, with task contextualization to enhance students' perception. In order to assess the functionality of such an approach, an exploratory study was carried out with a set of 14 students, divided into 3 groups, spatially distant due to Covid-19 pandemic safety measures. Preliminary results were very promising and groupware was well accepted by participants.