What Teachers Need for Orchestrating Robotic Classrooms.

Educational Robots are gaining popularity in classrooms but can increase the load on teachers compared to the use of more traditional technologies. Providing support to teachers can make teachers confident in including robots in their teaching routines. In order to support teachers in managing robotic activities in the classroom, it is important to first understand the challenges they face when engaging with these activities. To investigate these challenges, we observed three teachers managing robotic activities across fifteen standard school sessions, followed by retrospective interviews. In these sessions, students performed group activities on assembling and programming different robotic platforms. The results highlight a) how managing the additional technical complexity of the robotic activity is challenging for teachers b) teachers interventions focus on supporting students make connections between their programs and their robot behaviour in the real-world. Building on our results, we discuss how orchestration tools may be designed to help alleviate teachers challenges and support teachers interventions in robotic classrooms.