Design Factors Affecting the Social Use of Programmable Robots to Learn Computational Thinking in Kindergarten

Programmable robots designed for preliterate children are one of the options being explored and put into practice for teaching computational thinking skills to children in preschool and kindergarten. Classroom use of these robots may involve use by groups of children due to cost, logistical, and pedagogical reasons. To understand design factors affecting the social use of these robots, we explored the use of three programmable robots with distinctive design characteristics in a kindergarten classroom. Our findings suggest that programmable robot designs that may work well for use by individual children may cause difficulties when shared by groups of children if not all children in the group are able to easily perceive the input (program), output (robot actions), or program state. Based on these design factors we provide recommendations for the design of programmable robots, their evaluation for social use, and for addressing design limitations with support by adult facilitators.