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Abstract- This paper deals with the use of telepresence robots in an educational context. To this day, these uses are often related to the problematic of "homebound students" 1. The emphatic context associated with these students masks the pedagogical difficulties encountered by telepresence learners. In this article, we first detail the use of the robot by homebound students, highlighting motivational factors. Then we focus on persistence using the robot, once this emphatic context declines. Finally, we describe our attempts to reduce transactional distance by adding connected learning environments.
Keywords: telepresence robots, motivation, transactional distance
1.Introduction
For the last few years, we have witnessed an intensification of the experimental use of telepresence robots in the educational system. In France, a recent study in the Auvergne Rhône-Alpes French area (AuRA) has reported the findings of a classroom use for students who are homebound1. Other studies [2] [10] have enforced these results and show that the main added value of telepresence in this context is the preservation of the social link between the students, the school, the teachers and especially the classmates. This preservation is an important guarantee of school continuity and the reduction of the risk of dropping out. However, beyond the psychosociological impact, questions about learning opportunities via telepresence robotics arise. Indeed, several difficulties come to disturb the distant student [3], for example the difficulties of perception of the teacher's and classmates' body language (virtual proprioception) due to a wide-angle camera, or the perception of the "Merobotic" and the new form of socialization allowed by this mechanical avatar [4]. The teacher may also be disturbed in the realization of his/her task to take into account the specific "presence" of this student, including the student in the didactic situation and follow the evolution of his/her learning, especially in the case of practical and skill assessments. After the positive impact of the robot during the first uses, a dropout over time can sometimes be noted, due to a too large transactional distance [5] correlated to a lack of practical adapted features in the telepresence device. Several projects have begun to explore these difficulties. J. Bell [6] studied the feeling of presence (incarnation) of distant students in hybrid teaching, from videoconferencing to the use of the telepresence robots....