Dr. Ilona Buchem’s Talk

Designing Learning Experiences with Humanoid Robots as Teaching Assistants

Learning Experience Design for Human-Robot Interaction is a relatively new field of research and practice, especially when it comes to designing interaction with humanoid robots as teaching and learning assistants. Humanoid robots such as NAO and Pepper (developed by Softbank Robotics) afford multimodal interaction through speech, non-verbal sounds, visual pattern recognition, gestures, and touch. These robots can not only support learning through dialogue but can also be animated to move their heads, arms, hands, legs and entire bodies in space to create embodied learning experiences.

This talk will focus on a learning experience that was based around interactions with humanoid robots as teaching and learning assistants, and will cover the design process that was successfully used. This experience with humanoid robots was a virtual collaboration of students from Germany and Israel as part of the courses on Learning Design (Germany) and Human-Computer Interaction (Israel) in bachelor study programs at two cooperating universities. The virtual collaboration followed a project-based approach in which students worked in teams on designing learning experiences with humanoid robots to support learning and teaching.

The focus of the talk will be on the methods that were used to boost creativity in designing innovative scenarios for the application of humanoid robots as teaching and learning assistants following the principles and tools used in Learning Experience Design and Human Computer Interaction such as Ethnographic Research, Empathy Maps, LX Design Canvas and Use Case Diagrams, as well as methods from Design Thinking such as Ideation and methods applied to support sharing and collaboration in virtual teams including feedback loops and scaffolding.

About Dr. Ilona Buchem

As a Professor of Media and Communication at Berlin University of Applied Sciences, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, Dr. Ilona Buchem teaches courses in bachelor’s and master’s programs, both on campus and online, including Digital Business (BSc.) and Media Informatics (MSc.).

Ilona Buchem has led a number of R&D projects dedicated to technology-enhanced learning, including Open Virtual Mobility (Erasmus+, Strategic Partnership, 2017 - 2020),  Open Badge Network (Erasmus+, Strategic Partnership, 2014 - 2017), BeuthBonus and CreditPoints (Qualification Programs for Migrant Academics, German Federal Program "Integration through Qualification”, 2013 - 2020), and Digital Future (Digital Strategies for Higher Education, Stifterverband - German Association of Foundations for Science, 2015 - 2017), a Wikipedia-Diversity project in cooperation with Wikimedia Germany promoting gender mainstreaming in Wikipedia. 

Dr. Buchem is the Chair of the EATEL Special Interest Group on Wearable Enhanced Learning, and is actively involved in some of the leading TEL organizations in Europe, including the European Association for Technology Enhanced Learning (EATEL), the European Distance and E-Learning Network (EDEN), and the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU). 


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