“Is Robotics in Education the right tool to face the future pivotal challenges of society?”By Dr. David Scaradozzi, Department of Information Engineering, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Italy |
 |
Abstract
Education is crucial to equip men and women with critical competencies that will enable them to find a job and participate in future society. Understanding how a student learns is essential to enhance teachers’ possibility of guiding the student toward the desired outcome. Modern technologies can support this process by gathering information seamlessly and providing hints automatically.
Robotics in Education (RiE) is a broad area of robotics applications in education. Within RiE, Educational Robotics (ER) helps students exploring powerful ideas and authentic learning in open-ended environments, where hardware and software tools allow them to explore and create solutions to a given task. Even if it is fundamental to assess, evaluate and identify such learning pedagogically, it is still unclear how to measure students’ learning achievements and certify them into a regular curriculum. The qualitative methodology seems to be the primary evaluation methodology used in the pedagogical practice to provide a rich and in-depth analysis of students’ learning. Although the qualitative methods are very suitable to represent the learning environment’s open-ended nature, they may be strongly affected by the observer’s bias and external factors.
Moreover, they are less effective in synthesizing information, which is a crucial ability when evaluating and supporting a whole class of students at the same time. In this respect, Educational Data Mining (EDM) and Learning Analytics (LA) can help identify and model students’ learning and assess ER activities in a real classroom with specific robotics tools. To successfully apply EDM and LA in a real scenario, a system that automatically and systematically collects data is needed. When reliable data are collected, they could be analyzed employing EDM and LA techniques to provide clear and understandable results to teachers.
Bio
David Scaradozzi (BEng, MEng, PhD, accredited Engineer, Assistant professor at the Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione and International Mobility/Networking Delegate of the Engineering Faculty at UNIVPM) graduated in Electronic Engineering at Università Politecnica delle Marche in 2001. After the PhD in Intelligent Artificial Systems, he worked in the R&D department of Indesit Company. Since 2007 he is assistant professor at the Department of Information Engineering of Università Politecnica delle Marche (UNIVPM).
At UNIVPM, David Scaradozzi is a member of the Professors Board of the PhD School in Information Engineering and is Chair of the courses: “Model Identification and Data Analysis” (Bachelor’s Degree in Automation Engineering); “Design and Optimisation of the Control systems” (Master’s Degree in Automation Engineering); “Advanced virtual instruments for simulation and control of complex systems” (PhD School in Information Engineering). For the period 2014 – 2018 he was vice president of the Information Engineering Commission at the Italian Association of Professional Engineers (Department of Ancona). Since 2019 he is the Member of the Rector International Relations and Networking board at UNIVPM. For the period 2014 – 2018 he was Chercheur Associé at LSIS – umr CNRS 6168 – Marseille, France. Since 2009 he is the Member of the Scientific Board of the Interuniversity Center of Integrated Systems for the Marine Environment (ISME). He has been also accredited ROV pilot of the micro and small class category since 2001 and specialized electronic technician for use and repair of underwater acoustic positioning systems.
He is author of about 90 publications in refereed international journals, books and conferences. His research activities are in the fields of:
– Control and Optimization of dynamical systems;
– Robotics and Automation (motion and interaction control problems in distributed agents; rapid prototyping and mechatronics);
– Underwater robotics and marine technologies, focusing on tools for 3D scientific documentation of sea operative surveys for marine protected areas and archaeological sites study using Divers, AUVs, ROVs and other technological devices;
– Educational Robotics, with special interests devoted to all the aspects regarding the identification and assessment of education processes, study and development of new robotic tools and lesson plans for teaching e-STrEM (environmental Science Technology robotics Engineering Maths) subjects, in formal and nonformal education.
He has been involved in different research projects funded by the European Commission as principal investigator and coordinator, in collaboration with several industrial companies and academic bodies both national and international, all in the field of robotics and automation. Furthermore, he has been involved in national projects where he was responsible for conducting the scientific documentation of sea operative surveys for archaeological sites study. In the field of Educational Robotics, during last decade he directed many experimentations involving students of primary and secondary schools. He cooperated with more than 60 primary and secondary schools in Italy, with the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research, the Italian Ministry for Equal Opportunities and INDIRE (the National Institute for Documentation, Innovation and Educational Research, the Italian Ministry of Education’s oldest research organisation).