Construction of Teaching Assistant Robot in Programming Class

Abstract

This paper describes a robot for supporting instructors who are teaching programming classes. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan, in its Latest Course of Study, strongly recommends using a system of active learning and conducting programming education in elementary schools. Programming instruction typically includes explanation of the basic syntax of programming languages, application of basic syntax, and exercises. However, in programming classes, the teachers spend much more time correcting errors, that is, programming bugs, in students' programs than they spend teaching. To help make programming classes more effective, we aim to build a robot that helps students troubleshoot and fix bugs during programming lessons. The robot needs to detect students having difficulty and find mistakes in students' programs. This paper describes techniques necessary for the teaching assistant robot to support a teacher in programming classes. In particular, this paper explains the abilities of the teaching assistant robot to detect students raising their hands, confirm the correctness of a vehicle robot assembled by a student, and check a student's program by evaluating the performance of the vehicle robot. We also show the effectiveness of the teaching robots by conducting evaluation experiments using these techniques.