Digital Life receives award during international conference

‘Design Specifications for a Social Robot Math Tutor’ paper wins award

21 Mar 2023 15:50 | Centre for Applied Research FDMCI

The paper ‘Design Specifications for a Social Robot Math Tutor’ was awarded second prize for the Best Studies Paper Award at the International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction of the Association for Computing Machinery/Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (ACM/IEEE). The paper is part of the SOROCOVA project, short for Social Robotics to support COVID-19 LeArning disabilities, of the Digital Life research group. Professor Somaya Ben Allouch: “I am very proud of the entire SOROCOVA team. There has also been a lot of international appreciation for our approach, in which we work with external partners to use patient social robots to provide a personalised learning experience for children with learning disabilities.”

SOROCOVA

COVID-19 measures had a major impact on how children were taught throughout the world. Dutch children also had to make the transition from in-person to digital education during the first lockdown. During the second lockdown, teaching and interaction between teachers and pupils was also mainly online. The SOROCOVA project builds on an existing application by further developing social robotics as a learning tool to support teachers and pupils in the upper years (years 4, 5 and 6) of primary education in order to increase understanding of pupils’ learning deficits in mathematics due to COVID-19 measures. In addition, social robotics and associated mathematics modules are used to support teachers in teaching mathematics in a way that motivates their pupils. The project is a collaboration between the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, Florente Primary Schools, the Municipality of Diemen, the City of Amsterdam, the University of Amsterdam and Interactive Robotics.

View the paper via this link and click here for more information about the project. Digital Life is one of the seven core research groups of the Faculty of Digital Media and Creative Industries of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.