A Playful Experiential Learning System With Educational Robotics

This article reports on two studies that aimed to evaluate the effective impact ofeducational robotics in learning concepts related to Physics and Geography. Thereported studies involved two courses from an upper secondary school and two coursesfroma lower secondary school. Upper secondary school classes studied topics ofmotionphysics, and lower secondary school classes explored issues related to geography.In each grade, there was an “experimental group” that carried out their study usingrobotics and cooperative learning and a “control group” that studied the same conceptswithout robots. Students in both classes were subjected to tests before and after therobotics laboratory, to check their knowledge in the topics covered. Our initial hypothesiswas that classes involving educational robotics and cooperative learning are moreeffective in improving learning and stimulating the interest and motivation of students.As expected, the results showed that students in the experimental groups had a farbetter understanding of concepts and higher participation to the activities than studentsin the control groups.