#researchpracticum

Looking back at trying to get people to participate in our generative design session I can say that I didn’t move to physical interactions quick enough. I was emailing teachers, receptionists, and other admin type people trying to get it off the ground but it didn’t go anywhere until I picked up the phone and started chasing people up. 

In one case, Campbells Bay Primary school. I went in there and they asked me to email them, in another, Westlake Boys High School, I emailed and they didn’t respond until I called them. I guess this shows that if you want people to do something, especially in a case like this where there is little benefit for them, you have to keep asking for it. Dale Carnegie discussed this in How to Win Friends and Influence People, you can’t just ask people to help out without giving something back. This is something I really missed when approaching schools. At the beginning I was actually asking them to come into the city and this got very little response. I’m unsure of what I could actually give back to the teachers apart from the experience. Yeah maybe I could have amped up the robot element, the opportunity to play with a robot and discuss the future! Instead of my boring appeal to look at student and teacher biases. 

After reviewing my proposal Ricardo pointed out a few misguided ideas of mine and how we might solve them. 

-          You say “It goes without saying that automation will lead to the automating of all jobs, eventually” Well, no. Automation will not lead to the automating of all jobs. Automation makes a lot of economic sense for some jobs (not all), and the cost/benefit threshold of automation will be different across occupations and even countries. We need much more sophisticated views of the future to work on these topics.

-          Then “we can assume that teaching positions will eventually be taken by robots and AI” Again, no. This is a rather common but very misinformed and naïve view of teaching. I can imagine that even a series of well-designed and well conducted hands-on (generative) interviews with teachers would yield some very insightful reasons on what parts of teaching may be replaceable using robots, and which ones are much more unlikely. You do point out to a few in the next paragraphs.

-          Very important: we need to distinguish between robots and AI, and can’t put them in the same sentence just like that. Most of AI doesn’t need a body, and robots do a lot of things without any AI, sure there’s an overlap but it’s rather constraining to think of AI and robots as one thing. Our good friend Ashok Goel did something interesting recently, that perhaps you’d find useful although that’s AI and not robots at all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbCguICyfTA

-          Your goal: “I want to understand whether a robotic teacher’s teachings change the student in a significant way.” I think this is a very good starting point (despite the appalling initial premises, lol). Let’s work on this, I can see some rather interesting possibilities to tackle this question in a few weeks.

-          “That being said it’s entirely plausible that very soon Nao will be.” No, see above.

-          “Robots can provide aid in other ways” Indeed, and you do imagine a few. I can also see some possible ways. What if we showed Nao to one or a few teachers (and students?) and ask them to ponder on this question seriously and meaningfully? Their initial responses will be too optimistic or too fatalistic, and certainly too simplistic and naïve. But what if we help them overcome the usual tropes, stereotypes, and myths? What may they be able to see about the ways in which robots can aid in education?

-          You say about robots: “They won’t get tired, show up late or have any biases towards students.” Well. Teachers don’t have “bugs” in their code, they don’t “break down”, and all technology has biases, all technology inherits biases from their creators, any claim that robots are unbiased is naïve and ill informed. Let’s talk about that, you can start with the reading attached by Joseph Weizenbaum from 1972.

-          “what they taught me off the books more than on the books” This is a very powerful seed of an idea that shows the type of things that may come up when interviewing and working with teachers and students. What else is taught by human teachers (and fellow human students) that is not captured in books, exams, and grades?

These were certainly helpful. I think what we lacked here was a proper discussion after this email. These points could be explored and expanded on. I read the readings and we moved on to the generative design planning. I understand that Ricardo and maybe the whole paper is designed to push the student to be not only independent but autodidactic. 

That being said I really didn’t understand that from the beginning, maybe I could have communicated better with Ricardo. We outlined a timeline and checked off dates but these were all far and few between, I should have piped up and said, I’m not sure what to be doing in the free hours. Our meetings were very brief and I often left them with questions unresolved.

In future sessions similar to this I think a management tool would have been helpful. If we had set up a Freedcamp, where we could share articles, discussion points and create a list of tasks we would have been far more productive. I think there was just a general lack of communication, more from Ricardo than myself in the beginning and more from both of us at the end. In the beginning Ricardo would not reply to emails for many days and I lacked the initiative to find a phone number or some other method of contact. Now, since he has been overseas we haven’t spoken at all, he hasn’t replied to my emails and I have stopped sending them. I think ideally I could have been better organised in finding a group of teachers and more proactive in constructing a generative design session so that I could do it by myself.

 What halted the proposed session at Westlake Boys High School was my lapse in understanding Ricardo being away, I could have saved this by writing down when he told me he would be away. Also my lapse in writing down the password for the robot’s controller laptop stunted my opportunity of taking it to the school alone. One thing that might have aided us in communicating was to take a Fika.  

Fika (Swedish): a traditional break from work usually involving a drink of coffee or tea. In Swedish offices, you are strongly expected to take a fika, no matter how busy you are. You should not discuss business matters, but chat pleasantly with your colleagues and get to know those above and below you in the official pecking order. It’s democracy and community in a beverage.

At the beginning of the semester me and Ricardo came together to discuss plans for the research practicum paper. Ricardo was open to a broad view of suggestions under robot and human interactions. After a week I came back with a proposal looking at robot and AI teacher biases in future classrooms.

Effects of pupils under robot teachers proposal - 

It goes without saying that automation will lead to the automating of all jobs, eventually. Why work when we have machines and programs that can work for us. In this line of thinking, we can assume that teaching positions will eventually be taken by robots and AI. I want to understand whether a robotic teacher’s teachings change the student in a significant way.

Are these robot teachers more efficient? From looking at videos of Nao and discussing the robot with you it’s clear that they’re not quite ready to take on a class of kids. That being said it’s entirely plausible that very soon Nao will be. Robots can provide aid in other ways, they don’t have to take over the class but can learn about children’s teaching styles and provide teachers with information about who needs to learn what and how. They won’t get tired, show up late or have any biases towards students. 

Do their methods influence the student to a degree that the students adapt robotic traits? Children are malleable, they pick up our mannerisms, ideas and values. What would 14 years in education under a robot teacher do to children? Would the lack of the human role model do to be significant? I still think back often of my school teachers, what they taught me off the books more than on the books. Those off the cuff remarks about the real world that stuck with me because I looked up to my teachers, they are mentors. As Sharkey (2016) discusses, pupils may be more inclined to spend time with the predictable robot over their volatile peers, which may hinder their social development skills. Will children of the future have the same robot teacher for the duration of their education, will robot and student form bonds about things outside of the curriculum. Is that a positive or a negative outcome? I know that these questions cannot be fully answered in our study. But could there be some sort of stepping stone study where we monitor the teachings of a few classes, one with a robot teacher as the primary tutor and the others using traditional teachers, throughout a 10-week window and see if there are effects on the students? I’m not sure if that’s a long enough period to be influenced by a robot but it could provide us with some preliminary data. I feel that children will be more engaged with a robot teacher at first but perhaps the novelty will wear off over time. 

If this proves too far-fetched for our purposes in this paper I’m very much open your suggestions. I would enjoy something to do with psychology or ethics rather than coding but I’m not going to say no to anything.