Social robot as a facilitator of research ethics education
Chowdhury, Shahnaj Sharmin (2022)
2022
Tietotekniikan DI-ohjelma - Master's Programme in Information Technology
Informaatioteknologian ja viestinnän tiedekunta - Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2022-05-24
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202205185043
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202205185043
Tiivistelmä
Ethical considerations and challenges are a part of conducting any type of research on a regular basis. The most sensible aspect nowadays is to do research in an ethical manner while maintaining all pedagogical issues. Many developed and developing countries, as well as university and private institutes have their own ethics committees and review boards to foster ethical research.
The use of technology and easy access to information has helped us to develop ethics education more accessible. Students can get relevant information quickly, reduce costs, and expand the reach of research ethics courses by using online resources. However, when conducting their own research, they frequently struggle to best satisfy ethical norms and address ethical restrictions using methodologically sound ways, and they largely rely on interactive, engaging, and attentive learning mediums to understand re-search ethics.
We aimed to bring a novel experience of learning research ethics in this thesis by introducing social robots as a facilitator of research ethics education. When it comes to learning, social robots have been studied extensively, with particular emphasis on science and language learning.
During the course of this thesis, we carried out a user study (N=7) in order to deter-mine the needs of users and design guidelines of a social robot as a research ethics education facilitator, as well as to obtain an in-depth understanding of the topic of research ethics and pedagogical technologies that are currently available. We designed an interaction concept for Pepper which includes a quiz game and discussion features as it came out from the findings that gamified and fun elements have potential in enhancing students’ learning capacity and motivation. During this evaluation study, we interviewed the participants (N=9) and observed their general behavior while engaging with the social robot and participating in the learning session.
Evaluation study revealed that a social robot can play an acceptable role as a facilitator of research ethics education. It can help raise awareness about the importance of ethics in research. Design concepts should be playful, simple, straightforward, and friendly to build trust and provide comfort which leads to acceptance of the users. Pepper was able to captivate the participants' curiosity, and they were eager to interact with him while studying. Participants were noticed to be comfortable, friendly and having positive and pleasurable experiences while interacting with Pepper. People find it a fun way of learning as well as a novel concept.
We identified several design implications to consider while designing social robots as an acceptable facilitator of the research ethics education throughout our studies which we believe to be quite beneficial and effective to this novel interaction concept, as well as in the field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). Some key design implications are, design of social robots should be interesting, gamified and entertaining, design should be responsive with explicit and well-presented purpose, human-like interaction concept in social robot design, design should be simple, straightforward, friendly and culturally unbiased, and design process should adopt ethical consideration.
The use of technology and easy access to information has helped us to develop ethics education more accessible. Students can get relevant information quickly, reduce costs, and expand the reach of research ethics courses by using online resources. However, when conducting their own research, they frequently struggle to best satisfy ethical norms and address ethical restrictions using methodologically sound ways, and they largely rely on interactive, engaging, and attentive learning mediums to understand re-search ethics.
We aimed to bring a novel experience of learning research ethics in this thesis by introducing social robots as a facilitator of research ethics education. When it comes to learning, social robots have been studied extensively, with particular emphasis on science and language learning.
During the course of this thesis, we carried out a user study (N=7) in order to deter-mine the needs of users and design guidelines of a social robot as a research ethics education facilitator, as well as to obtain an in-depth understanding of the topic of research ethics and pedagogical technologies that are currently available. We designed an interaction concept for Pepper which includes a quiz game and discussion features as it came out from the findings that gamified and fun elements have potential in enhancing students’ learning capacity and motivation. During this evaluation study, we interviewed the participants (N=9) and observed their general behavior while engaging with the social robot and participating in the learning session.
Evaluation study revealed that a social robot can play an acceptable role as a facilitator of research ethics education. It can help raise awareness about the importance of ethics in research. Design concepts should be playful, simple, straightforward, and friendly to build trust and provide comfort which leads to acceptance of the users. Pepper was able to captivate the participants' curiosity, and they were eager to interact with him while studying. Participants were noticed to be comfortable, friendly and having positive and pleasurable experiences while interacting with Pepper. People find it a fun way of learning as well as a novel concept.
We identified several design implications to consider while designing social robots as an acceptable facilitator of the research ethics education throughout our studies which we believe to be quite beneficial and effective to this novel interaction concept, as well as in the field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). Some key design implications are, design of social robots should be interesting, gamified and entertaining, design should be responsive with explicit and well-presented purpose, human-like interaction concept in social robot design, design should be simple, straightforward, friendly and culturally unbiased, and design process should adopt ethical consideration.