This study investigates the impact of a creative course on college student’s learning motivation, creativity, and empathy in the development of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) robots for elders. By immerse the learners into a contextualized and authentic learning setting, project-based learning (PBL) has widely been used in engineering education. It has been regarded as an effective approach to empower the learners to come out with a variety of creative solutions to deal with real-world problems (Grant and Branch, 2005). A well-developed Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) system often requires interdisciplinary knowledge, such as design and technology (Preece et al, 2015), persuasive technology for making behavior change (Fogg, 2002) or requires interdisciplinary team collaborations (Duncan et al, 2014) to optimize the requirements of desirability, feasibility and viability for developing products, services and technologies for HCI systems.

Therefore, an HCI robot course was initiated in an elite university by recruiting teachers and students from a wide range of disciplines and professional backgrounds. More specifically, professors come from a range of departments (including Engineering Science, Computer Science, Industrial Design, Education, Creative Industries Design, and Sports, Health, and Leisure Management), professionals, and creative practitioners worked closely to teach a group of 30 students for one semester. The professors and professionals facilitated the students to develop HCI robots with an altruistic purpose of helping elders in four categories: (a) Entertainment robot, (b) medical care robot, (c) chatting robot, and (d) friendship enhancing robot. Based on Design Thinking (Brown, 2009; IDEO, 2013), the students developed their HCI robots through four phases, including Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver.

Methodologically, a pretest and posttest quasi-experimental design was adopted. The study recruited a total of 30 college students, who were registered in the departments of Computer Science and Information Engineering (CSIE), Engineering Science (ES), Systems and Naval Mechatronic Engineering (SNME), and Industrial Design (ID). Three research instruments were used and analyzed, including (a) Wu and Cherng’s (1992) Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) was used to evaluate the student’s learning motivation (Cronbach’s α = .831). Two subscales of MSLQ were used, including “self-efficacy” (Cronbach’s α = .836) and “valuing the significance of learning on future career development” (Cronbach’s α = .824). (b) Chen’s (2006) Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults (ATTA) was used to quantify the participant’s creative strengths in fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration through figural and verbal tests. (c) Self-developed Empathy Scale was used to evaluate the student’s empathy for elders (Cronbach’s α = .897).

The course has been proved as a very effective course for college students to develop HCI robots for elders. Throughout the experimental period, the course has improved the participants’ capabilities: (a) Learning motivation (p=.05) (self-efficacy, p=.015; valuing the significance of learning on future work). The participants reported that they have experienced improvement in collaboration and communication skills. (b) Creativity was significantly improved (p=.00), among the four facets of creativity, the participants’ fluency (p= .006); originality (p= .024); elaboration (p= .000) are improved; yet the flexibility was not significantly improved (p=.109). (c) Empathy for elders increased significantly (p=.006). In conclusion, the HCI robot course can be regarded as one of the frontiers in engineering education in Taiwan. The course systematically embedded the interdisciplinary knowledge and successfully merged the participants from different majors (CSIE, ES, SNME, and ID).

Methodologically, to provide substantive empirical evidence, a mixed method design - embedded experimental model was employed throughout the investigation. The priority of the research was established by the quantitative, experimental methodology, and the qualitative dataset was conducted as a subservient source within the investigation. The study recruited a total of 30 college students, who were registered in the departments of Computer Science and Information Engineering (CSIE), Engineering Science (ES), Systems and Naval Mechatronic Engineering (SNME), and Industrial Design (ID). Three research instruments were used and analyzed, including (a) Wu and Cherng’s (1992) Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) was used to evaluate the student’s learning motivation (Cronbach’s α = .831). Two subscales of MSLQ were used, including “self-efficacy” (Cronbach’s α = .836) and “valuing the significance of learning on future career development” (Cronbach’s α = .824). (b) Chen’s (2006) Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults (ATTA) was used to quantify the participant’s creative strengths in fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration through figural and verbal tests. (c) Self-developed Empathy Scale was used to evaluate the student’s empathy for elders (Cronbach’s α = .897). In addition, focus interviews with participants will be carried out in the following months for gaining a more comprehensive understanding of the impact of the HCI robots for elders course. The interviews can facilitate the researchers to know the participants’ perceptions on the course, including the course design, delivery, the working experience with teachers and students from different professional backgrounds, and the robot development process.

The course has been proved as a very effective course for the college students to develop HCI robots for elders. Throughout the experimental period, the course has improved the participants’ capabilities: (a) Learning motivation (p=.05) (self-efficacy, p=.015; valuing the significance of learning on future work). The participants reported that they have experienced an improvement on collaboration and communication skills. (b) Creativity was significantly improved (p=.00), among the four facets of creativity, the participants’ fluency (p= .006); originality (p= .024); elaboration (p= .000) are improved; yet the flexibility was not significantly improved (p=.109). (c) Empathy for elders increased significantly (p=.006). In conclusion, the HCI robot course can be regarded as one of the frontiers in engineering education in Taiwan. The course systematically embedded the interdisciplinary knowledge and successfully merged the participants from different majors (CSIE, ES, SNME, and ID). Designed as a mixed methods study, a series of focus interviews will be carried out to triangulate the quantitative findings in the following months. Therefore, other findings, educational implications, and suggestions will be articulated and presented in ECER in more details if this paper can be accepted by the ECER 2019.

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