Children’s maths performance is declining. At the same time, the shortage of primary school teachers is increasing. The teaching time available is spent on the cognitive aspects of maths: ensuring that children understand and master the basic skills. But maths is a subject in which negative emotions also play a significant role – more so than in other subjects. And those emotions can have a negative impact on maths performance.

Although teachers agree that emotional aspects are important, they lack the time, knowledge, skills and appropriate tools to address these systematically. This gave rise to the idea of developing a robot assistant for teachers that takes children’s emotions towards maths into account. Based on brief, child-friendly micro-check-ins, the robot can deploy appropriate emotion-regulation strategies where necessary. In this way, both the cognitive and affective aspects of maths can be addressed, without placing additional time pressure on teachers.

Image & Video

Publications

Project duration

from 01-09-2026 to 01-09-2028

Project manager

Simone de Droog, associate lector Digital Life, Hogeschool van Amsterdam

Researchers

Somaya Ben Allouch, lector Digital Life, HvA

Marianne Bossema, docent-onderzoeker Digital Life, HvA

Monique Schaule Jullens, programmamanager Digital Life, HvA

Matthijs Smakman, lector, Hogeschool Utrecht

Veerle Hobbelink, promovendus, Hogeschool Utrecht

Rosa Alberto, onderzoeker, Hogeschool Utrecht

Mike Ligthart, assistent professor, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Sanne van der Ven, docent-onderzoeker, Radboud Universiteit

Funding

SIA RAAK Publiek

Partners

• Expertisecentrum Ponto
• Smartrobot.Solutions
• Florente basisscholen
• Gemeente Diemen

The COVID-19 measures have a major impact on how children are educated worldwide. Dutch children also had to make the switch in the first lockdown from physical to digital education. During the second lockdown, education and interaction between teachers and students was again mainly via screens.

The purpose of this application is to build on an already existing application by (further) developing social robotics as a learning tool to support teachers and students in the upper years, namely groups 6, 7 and 8, of primary education to gain insight into an increase in accumulated learning disadvantages due to COVID-19 measures in math education among students.

In addition to obtaining the insights, social robotics and the associated math modules will also be used to support teachers in providing math education to students in a motivating way.

The broad consortium, consisting of primary schools, teacher training colleges, municipalities, robotics company, colleges and universities, makes it possible to go through an iterative cycle during the project so that adjustments to the social robot can be made during the duration of the project. With this approach, the outcomes after the project can be integrated without too much extra development time into the already available infrastructure of primary schools for the use of social robotics in the learning process.

This research will provide insights into 1) the functioning of the diagnostic and educational function of social robotics in mathematics education in upper primary education; 2) the use and implementation of social robotics to reduce COVID-19 learning gaps in upper primary education; 3) how technological innovations such as social robotics are used by teachers in the learning process of their students and whether they experience a facilitating role of the robot in this; and 4) the empowering role that innovations in education can have in limiting the negative consequences such as the COVID-19 learning disadvantages.

Please see the  SOROCOVA website for up to date information about the project.

Image & Video

Publications

Design Specifications for a Social Robot Math Tutor – ‘Best Studies Paper Award – Runner up’

(2023 )Mike Ligthart, Simone de Droog, Marianne Bossema, Lamia Elloumi, Kees Hoogland, Matthijs Smakman, Koen Hindriks & Somaya Ben AllouchHRI ’23  >>download

Project duration

1 Jun 2021 -31 May 2023

Project manager

prof. dr Somaya Ben Allouch

Researchers

dr Simone de Droog

Marianne Bossema MSc

drs Monique Schaule Jullens

dr. Lamia Elloumi

Koen Hindriks, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Matthijs Smakman, Hogeschool Utrecht

Kees Hoogland, Hogeschool Utrecht

Stan van Ginkel, Hogeschool Utrecht

Funding

SIA COVID-19 fonds

Partners

• Vrije Universiteit Amsterrdam
• Hogeschool Utrecht
• Florente Basisscholen
• Gemeente Diemen
• Gemeente Amsterdam
• Universiteit van Amsterdam
• Interactive Robotics