A Review on the Use of Robots in Education and Young Children.

Introduction With the rapid development of technology in the 21st century, the use of multi-media tool in education has become increasingly popular. Notwithstanding their usual engineering applications, robots are being used more in schools. According to Beran et al. (2011), children are also playing more with technologically advanced devices during their playtime. Subsequently, studies were conducted to investigate robot use's influence on children's cognition, language, interaction, social and moral development (Wei et al., 2011; Kozima & Nakagawa, 2007; Shimada, Kanda & Koizumi, 2012; Kahn et al., 2012). Recent studies (Wei, Hung, Lee & Chen, 2011; Highfield, 2010; Chen, Quadir & Teng, 2011) reported that robot use encourages interactive learning, making children more engaged in their learning activities. This increase research on robot application to education needs systematic look at the direction taken this past decade in order to elucidate a roadmap for future studies. Recent reviews on the use of robots in education show the challenges faced by researchers in this field. Benitti (2012) points out that more than 70 papers could have qualified in his review work but only 10 provided quantitative measurement on the use of robots in education. From these ten papers, only those that discuss the potential of using robots in all level of education and highlight the non-engineering benefits were selected. Mubin et al. (2013) analysed research works from through the actual robots used. The major factors identified were robot's role, type (physical form), behaviour (capabilities and interaction capacity), learning activity type, and venue (inside or outside of classroom) where learning takes place. Mubin et al. (2013) and Benitti (2012) find similarity on the topics where robots were being used in education--learning language, science, and technology. Although Mubin et al. (2013) differs by pointing out the various roles played by the robot in education--as tutor, tool, or peer. The reviews provide good starting points for researchers, the criteria (Benitti, 2012) and perspective (Mubin et al., 2013) taken by these two papers could potentially miss those that could be relevant to researchers in the field. Moreover, other factors critical in the use of robot in education may have been overlooked, like the effect of design on interaction or the importance of parent's perception in the success of implementing a robot-in-education project. The aim of this paper is to assess the effectiveness of using robots in studies published within the last decade. We look at effectiveness as having four sub-factors--the study type done by the researcher, the influence of the robots on the behaviour and development of students, the perception of stakeholders (parents, educators and children) about the robots, and the importance of design or robot appearance. To achieve this aim, we would focus on articles on the application of robots in early childhood and lower level education and evidence for the factors would be analysed. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The review approach, especially the search and selection strategies, is discussed in details in the next section. The discussions on the four factors above are described in the succeeding sections. The conclusion provides a summary and presents the remaining challenges in this research field. Review approach To limit the papers to be reviewed, we implemented a search and selection strategy using specific keywords in electronic databases. We started with 369 articles and narrowed it down to 27. Search strategy Articles reviewed were limited to those published in English from 2003-2013. To gather as many papers as possible, five major databases were searched: IEEE Xplore, Academic Search Premier, ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center, ScienceDirect, and SpringerLink. …