Invloed van intrinsieke motivatie en sekse op sociale interactie tijdens programmeren met robots en computerprogramma’s.

Abstract

Due to the rapid technological developments, it is important that children will be educated in 21st-century skills. One of these skills is social interaction. The use of ICT tools such as robotics and computers are becoming increasingly popular in education. Various prior studies show that robotics can provoke children to social interaction. Interesting to see is that in these studies robotics are barely compared to other ICT tools. This study examined whether there is a significant difference in provoking social interaction between a computer and a robot, and whether gender and motivation contribute to it. In this study 86 children aged 9 to 12 years participated. They were requested to attend a programming lesson with a computer or a robot in boy-boy duos, girl-girl duos or boy-girl duos. The lesson was recorded with a video camera and by using a coding scheme the construct social interaction was analysed. The intrinsic motivation was measured by the use of the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI). Surprisingly, the results demonstrated that there were no significant differences in social interaction between the robot and computer condition. From these findings, it could be implied that the use of robots during programming is not necessary for schools in order to provoke social interaction. Moreover, the variable gender did not affect the degree of interaction during programming with robots or computers. However, children were found to be more intrinsically motivated in the robot condition, compared to the computer condition.