6 Educational Benefits of Robots in the Classroom

The COVID-19 pandemic reshaped the education sector, with school closures and online classes leading to the world’s largest remote learning experience. This experience, although unplanned, opened our eyes to the benefits of technology and digital tools for assisting teachers. So, why stop there? Why not have the best of both worlds and integrate new technology into face-to-face teaching? Why not bring a robot into the classroom? 

Here are 6 benefits of using robots in the classroom:

Robots in Education Enhance Student Engagement

Educators afford high priority to maintaining student engagement in their classroom. After all, higher engagement directly improves information retention, and this boosts the overall success of learning.

This is where your classroom buddy can provide essential support. Having robots in education – especially moving, walking robots – captures your students’ curiosity due to the excitement and novelty they bring, and this fascination and interest leads to greater student engagement.

Embracing the emergence of new and unique technologies can be daunting, but there is no need to fear. EdTech products – including Robotics systems – are designed to be a valuable ally, providing essential support throughout your teaching journey.

Robots in Schools Provide Continuous Assessment

Robots can continuously assess students’ performance and understanding of concepts through interactions and activities. This real-time feedback helps educators identify areas where students need additional support or increased challenges.

Interactions with educational robots evolve over time as a child’s experience and skills grow. With robots integrated into the classroom, students embark on a progression-based learning journey that begins with simple instructional commands and gradually advances to using more complex coding languages.

Furthermore, the power of continuous assessment through robots lies in its whole-school potential. Through integration with dynamic and data-driven classroom management systems, robots in schools can be part of fostering a learning community focused on progressive improvement.

A Robot Teacher Tool Promotes Active Learning

It is natural to worry that once their novelty has diminished, robots will have no tangible utility in education. This is, however, very much not the case.

In fact, the integration of robots into the learning process serves a specific, and vital, pedagogical objective: to develop students’ programming, coding, and engineering skills through active learning.

Unlike passive teaching methods, the incorporation of robots creates a practical learning environment whereby students actively and constructively engage in creating their knowledge. Essentially, they “learn by doing”, and this approach encourages two significant outcomes: the capacity to solve problems through creative solutions, and the ability to assume personal responsibility over one’s learning.

Ultimately, by teaching your students how to become creative and self-sufficient learners, a supporting robot teacher is the perfect way to promote active learning in your classroom.

Robots in the Classroom Create Inclusivity

Embarrassment – or fear of looking foolish – can strongly hinder educational performance. Children (and adults) often worry about making mistakes in front of their peers, creating challenges for educators to adequately assess areas where students might be struggling.

However, this is precisely where our small learning buddy can play a crucial role. Robots are deemed friendly and non-judgmental, creating a more relaxed classroom atmosphere that puts children at ease. Using robots, therefore, can boost students’ confidence, leading to better support for those who may be facing difficulties.

With robots in the classroom, students are more likely to take risks, ask questions, and explore new concepts without the fear of judgment. Their integration in education thus proves to be a promising approach for creating an inclusive classroom.

Further Support: At EdTech Impact, we firmly believe that an inclusive classroom serves as the backbone of a well-behaved learning environment, so much so that it constitutes a substantial part of our insight into effective behaviour management.

Classroom Robots Encourage Collaborative Learning

Robots are not just valuable for teaching essential STEM skills; they also excel at developing soft skills through collaborative learning.

Like various other Collaborative tools, the benefits of robots comes from their invaluable ability to equip your students with the social skills necessary for future integration into the workplace.

With a robot in the classroom, your students have the ability to improve teamwork, communication, task-commitment and leadership skills across all ages.

Robotics in Education Supports Personalised Learning

Educational robots offer invaluable support to children with specific requirements, and can be customised to provide unique learning experiences.

Unlike humans, robots are predictably obedient and follow programmed instructions without deviation. This inherent predictability is especially beneficial for children on the autism spectrum who can struggle with handling changes and unpredictability. The benefits of robots, therefore, lie in their ability to provide a stable and structured learning environment for your students, allowing them to focus on their learning material without having to decode unpredictable human behaviour around them.

On top of this, robots are thoughtfully designed to ensure accessibility for learners of all abilities. Take, for example, Marty the Robot, which offers a versatile learning experience tailored to individual needs. With Marty, less experienced students provide commands through instructional coloured cards, whilst confident coders are able to explore more advanced languages like Scratch and Python.

Much like Adaptive Learning and VLE educational solutions, the advantages of robots in the classroom stems from their ability to empower educators to implement personalised learning support for their students, thereby ensuring universal learner accessibility.

Conclusion

The potential importance of robots in education is enormous, but their appropriate role in the classroom is currently misunderstood.

To maximise the advantages of robots in the classroom, embrace them as a supportive tool designed to enrich your students’ learning experience and improve their overall development.

EdTech Impact aims to meet school buyer needs by connecting them with the world’s leading EdTech companies. Additionally, we set industry standards through our quality framework, and offer regular news content to assist school leaders in making informed decisions about their purchases.