Educational Robotics to Support Social Relations at School

Abstract

Robotics is a powerful tool to support learning processes and to promote social relations. It gives the possibility to work in team thus stimulating the collaboration among students in a class-group. Therefore also the students who are marginal in the class have the opportunity to take part in group activities, improving social relationships with other students. In this paper we will describe the project “Group activities and social relations at school” proposed to a Middle School. This project foresees the comparison of three experimental conditions: educational robotics lab, coding lab with Scratch and control group. In order to analyze social relations among students, Moreno sociometric test has been employed. Results indicate robotics lab effectiveness in promoting relations at school.