Eliciting curiosity — the intrinsic desire to explore and to find new information — enhances learning, promotes information-seeking and improves memory. Understanding how to elicit and maintain curiosity in students could help us design educational robots that stimulate interest, engagement and a quest for knowledge.
“We’re conducting a number of studies that examine human–robot interaction, in particular if a robot peer expresses curiosity does its inquisitiveness spark curiosity in students,” said Edith Law, a Professor at the Cheriton School of Computer Science and member of its Human-Computer Interaction lab.
To explore the role of curiosity in learning, Professor Law and her research team conducted an experiment using a cooperative rock-classification game that a participant and an educational robot play together. Its goal was to see if curiosity could be fostered in participants through the verbal behaviour of a social robot.
Read more about their research.