Exploring Children’s Choices in an Educational Game on Neurodiversity: Reveiling Underlying Values through Robot’s Socratic Questioning

Exploring Children’s Choices in an Educational Game on Neurodiversity: Reveiling Underlying Values through Robot’s Socratic Questioning

Ottevanger, Laura (TU Delft Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)

Neerincx, M.A. (mentor)
Oertel, Catharine (graduation committee)

Delft University of Technology

Delft University of Technology

Computer Science

2023-09-12

In the Netherlands, there is a shortage of primary school teachers, due to this shortage, teachers often do not have a lot of one-on-one time with the students. A social robot could be the solution to creating more one-on-“one” time with the students. In addition to relieving some workload for the teachers, a social robot could assist in gaining insight into personal values. Gaining insight into personal values can contribute to the learning experience by increasing motivation. The value awareness of the children is the learning objective as value awareness is thought to increase the child’s competence and motivation. One of the options to gain insight into contextual values is Socratic Questioning. These questions are created to further the learning experience and are expected to increase value awareness. This thesis investigates how a social robot can assist children in attaining learning goals, reflecting on these goals, and exploring the decisions and values underlying their learning experiences related to neurodiversity. The effectiveness of the robot in achieving learning objectives, encouraging reflection on decisions and gaining insight into personal moral values is shown. To gain insight into personal values, two methods of Socratic Questioning have been compared; Clarification and Implications & Consequences. The participating children of this thesis play an educational game where moral dilemmas are presented. A social robot assists in the game and asks the Socratic Questions. The explanation to the Clarification has proven to be the most effective method out of the two to gain insight into moral values. Moreover, the interaction effect between question type and time shows that the impact of the question type on insight into values varies with the time a question is asked. Qualitative observations show the participants’ anticipation of the robot’s questions and show instances where responses are different from the self-reported value importance. Overall, this research sheds light on the potential of Socratic Questioning and its uses for understanding individual values, calling for further exploration in this area.

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:a7e8d023-f990-4bfc-afa6-a8cfbb536c30

2023-10-31

Student theses

master thesis

© 2023 Laura Ottevanger