Browsing by Author "Mitnik, Ruben"

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    Collaborative robotic instruction: A graph teaching experience
    (PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD, 2009) Mitnik, Ruben; Recabarren, Matias; Nussbaum, Miguel; Soto, Alvaro
    Graphing is a key skill in the study of Physics. Drawing and interpreting graphs play a key role in the understanding of science, while the lack of these has proved to be a handicap and a limiting factor in the learning of scientific concepts. It has been observed that despite the amount of previous graph-working experience, students of all ages experience a series of difficulties when trying to comprehend graphs or when trying to relate them with physical concepts such as position, velocity and acceleration. Several computational tools have risen to improve the students' understanding of kinematical graphs; however, these approaches fail to develop graph construction skills. On the other hand, Robots have opened new opportunities in learning. Nevertheless, most of their educational applications focus on Robotics related subjects, such as robot programming, robot construction, and artificial intelligence. This paper describes a robotic activity based on face-to-face computer supported collaborative learning. By means of a set of handhelds and a robot wirelessly interconnected, the aim of the activity is to develop graph construction and graph interpretation skills while also reinforcing kinematics concepts. Results show that students using the robotic activity achieve a significant increase in their graph interpreting skills. Moreover, when compared with a similar computer-simulated activity, it proved to be almost twice as effective. Finally, the robotic application proved to be a highly motivating activity for the students, fostering collaboration among them. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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    Developing Cognition with Collaborative Robotic Activities
    (NATL TAIWAN NORMAL UNIV, TAIWAN, 2009) Mitnik, Ruben; Nussbaum, Miguel; Recabarren, Matias
    Cognition, faculty related to perception, imagination, memory, and problem solving, refers to internal mental processes through which sensorial input is acquired, elaborated, used, and stored. One of its importances relies on the fact that it affects in a direct way the learning potential. It has been shown that, even thou cognitive processes develop side by side with biological maturity, this cognitive development can be enhanced by means of mediated learning as signaled by Feuerstein's Mediated Learning theory. Based on this theory is that we propose an intervention model that addresses school academic issues using technologically assisted small group collaboration, pursuing a dual academic objective: to thrive students' cognitive processes while addressing school curriculum topics. The purpose, therefore, is to balance the students' cognitive differences by means of in-school content-filled classroom activities. Our aim is to make use of peer mediation in a real world setting with a virtual construction of it. In this paper, we describe this novel intervention model along with an in-school usage experience. For this, we present an activity designed for high school students, specifically aimed to assist the learning of kinematics, graph interpretation, and graph plotting. In this activity the students work in groups of three, using a robot and wirelessly interconnected Personal Digital Assistants (PDA). By means of a controlled experiment, we show how technologically-supported peer mediation promotes the students' enrichment of their cognitive processes in each of the different stages of the mental act (input-elaboration-output), favoring communication skills, insight, and reasoning, while also restraining impulsive conduct and trial-and-error answers.
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    Indoor Mobile Robotics at Grima, PUC
    (2012) Caro, Luis; Correa, Javier; Espinace, Pablo; Langdon, Daniel; Maturana, Daniel; Mitnik, Ruben; Montabone, Sebastian; Pszczolkowski, Stefan; Araneda, Anita; Mery Quiroz, Domingo Arturo; Torres, Miguel; Soto, Alvaro