Banca de DEFESA: MARIA DA GUIA TORRES DA SILVA

Uma banca de DEFESA de MESTRADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : MARIA DA GUIA TORRES DA SILVA
DATE: 19/02/2024
TIME: 09:00
LOCAL: Sala 12 - DCA
TITLE:

Educational Robotics as a Pedagogical Resource for Students with Learning Difficulties

KEY WORDS:

Educational Robotics, Learning Difficulty, Learning Disorder

PAGES: 65
BIG AREA: Ciências Exatas e da Terra
AREA: Ciência da Computação
SUBÁREA: Metodologia e Técnicas da Computação
SPECIALTY: Sistemas de Informação
SUMMARY:

The use of Educational Robotics as a support tool in the teaching-learning process for children with learning difficulties is the core of our investigation. In this work, we try not to distinguish between (normal) difficulties caused by lack of interest or another solvable problem in the classroom or those caused by well-defined disorders in medicine. In an initial systematic review, in which we did a general search of articles and dissertations in conferences and journals using a well defined set of keywords that covered the most well-known learning problems and that also met the keyword "educational robotics", we identified that there are very few works on this topic, around 14 contributions. Given the novelty of the topic, we carried out a more in-depth analysis of these and other works, including several issues, not only related to learning difficulties. Our main question to be answered, from then on, was to identify how much and how educational robotics can be an adjunct in the teaching-learning process, for these students with difficulties. With this in mind, we defined the quali-quanti research methodology to identify the remaining points, where we adopted questionnaires as a data collection instrument. We provide forms with questions for students, teachers, and monitors from selected schools, among those that have educational robotics activities (all public schools) in the city of Natal, RN, Brazil. Through an analysis of the data obtained from the forms, we observed an increase in the use of robotics in education, in general. However, we mainly identified that, although students with learning difficulties or disorders are found in educational institutions, they are not completely included in robotics activities. Nonetheless, after compiling and analyzing the data, we reached positive results, which verify the possibility of application to improve learning in these children. That is, the majority of students and a good number of teachers and monitors agree that robotics has managed to improve the ability of students with difficulties in learning, especially transversal content. Regarding "how", we noticed that some factors are important. The first factor is the ease of understanding the robotics itself, brought about by new software and hardware tools developed by this pretty new scientific community, which greatly facilitate its use as a support tool. Furthermore, we note that the interest of teachers is another factor in the "how" that can collaborate in trying to improve the issue of learning difficulties. We noticed that interest improves with the use of these new tools, demystifying robotics, which is no longer a big deal for lay teachers. Furthermore, the existence of complete support systems for its application, free of charge and freely available, involving content and tools on the Web, in addition to an effective continuing education policy for teachers, have contributed to the tool becoming increasingly more effective, mainly, as highlighted, in content transversal to robotics.

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Presidente - 1345674 - LUIZ MARCOS GARCIA GONCALVES
Externa ao Programa - 5809342 - CARLA DA COSTA FERNANDES CURVELO - UFRNExterna ao Programa - 1646204 - LUCIANE TERRA DOS SANTOS GARCIA - UFRNExterna à Instituição - SARAH THOMAZ DE SA ROSSITER - IFRN