Cyberlearning workshop to host sharing of research, expertise in child/robot collaborative system

Yanghee Kim
Yanghee Kim

When Yanghee Kim visited the College of Education last August, the new Morgridge Chair eagerly promoted her January 2018 workshop funded by the National Science Foundation.

It begins Thursday.

The Center for Innovative Research in Cyberlearning (CIRCL) Workshop on Robots, Young Children and Alternative Input Methods will take place in the Capitol Room of the Holmes Student Center.

Researchers from learning sciences, computer sciences, engineering and social sciences will gather for two days of inquiry “into the development of a socio-technical collaborative system of embodied, humanoid robots and young children in ways that promote children’s intellectual, affective and social development.”

Day One will feature sessions that present current multidisciplinary research and that distinguish challenges and research issues in interaction design and technology development. Day Two – Friday – will focus on future work, including the identification of opportunities for collaboration and alignment with funding priorities.

Scholars in attendance will discuss sociable, educational robots; cognitive, affective and cultural theories; qualitative research methodology; designing and assessing robot/child behaviors; computational linguistics; speech technology and vision technology.

robotMany questions will guide the conversation.

  • What are the current statuses of research and development efforts in child/robot interaction?
  • What are theoretical perspectives that might guide research on developing child/robot collaborative systems?
  • What are important research issues in engineering child development assisted by a robot?
  • What technologies are available to design child/robot interaction and collect data to assess the efficacy?
  • What are the challenges and opportunities in developing such technologies and research programs?
  • In what way are the research issues aligned with the NSF goal of broadening participation in STEM education and STEM workforce (particularly, the NSF initiative INCLUDES, Human Technology Partnership)?

Presenters from NIU include Kyung Kim, Laura Ruth Johnson and Ying Xie, all of the College of Education’s Department of Educational Technology, Research and Assessment; and Reva Freedman, of the Department of Computer Sciences.

The workshop is invitation-only; for more information, email ykim@niu.edu.

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