Rong Zhang MSc Dissertation 2015/16

Investigate people's concerns about having robot teachers in school classrooms.

Supervised by A.Sharkey

Abstract

It could be expected that there is a bright prospect of introducing the robot teacher into the classroom. Not only in the research areas, has the robot teacher been put into use in the classroom in some countries. Some ethical care is arising along with the use of the robot teachers. Many previous studies have focused on the research of beneficial influence on students brought by the robot teacher.

This project aims to find out people's concerns about having robot teachers in school classrooms; a questionnaire was developed to ascertain people's attitudes. In this paper, certain relevant issues generated from seven scenarios are asked and discussed. In particular, according to the different cultural background, the survey data would be distinguished into two groups. Subsequently, the differences between two focus groups would be evaluated and analyzed to see how the cultural background affects people's opinion of robot teachers. The fundamental perspectives in this paper include privacy, personal happiness, the interactional effect on children and social effect.