Teamo, Collaborative Learning Companion

When we considered the prompt to build something for the future classroom, we envisioned students who would enter the workforce in perhaps 15-20 years (currently in elementary school). Rather than attempt to predict what skills would be most valuable at that time, we decided to focus on building a skillset that would allow students to pivot and acquire new skills as necessary.

Much has been written about collaborative learning and their importance in contributing to academic and professional success. As the world becomes more and more hyper-connected, problems become increasingly more complex. To solve these complex problems, people from diverse backgrounds need to work together more effectively and collaboratively. Despite the importance of collaborative teamwork, the majority of schools in China do not allocate resources to teaching students how to work together.

Our needfinding confirmed this notion. We found that 5th-6th grade Chinese students have a hard time expressing their ideas in class often due to shyness or a fear of making mistakes and appearing stupid to others. At the same time, we observed that schools and the competitive academic culture in China often lead to too much self-studying. This further discouraged students from taking advantage of learning from and working with each other.

Team NetDragon consists of a combined team of mechanical engineers, learning sciences, and design students from Stanford University and Beijing Normal University. During the Global team consolidation period, we visited a local elementary school for needfinding purposes and settled on the idea of group work as a current pain point. Students generally do not engage in much group work in Chinese elementary schools; partially due to logistical difficulties on the teacher's behalf with often over 40 students in one class making it difficult to monitor 10 or more independent groups at once.

Based on our needfinding, we developed prototypes of a collaborative learning robot that facilitate group interactions to provide students equitable teaching opportunities. From our prototype tests, we learned that students see a robot not just as a teacher, learner, or learning tool, but as a teammate and a companion. This led us to design Teamo, a collaborative learning companion for classrooms that promotes team collaboration among 5th and 6th grade Chinese students.

Teamo's mission is to leverage students’ individual strengths to enhance collaborative opportunities and consolidate understanding of the learning material. By tracking individual student contribution during group activities, Teamo is able to personalize its questions and interactions in the way that best promotes collaboration.

Teamo is also designed to reduce teacher's workload by helping them monitor student team dynamics and notifying them when students need their help. This enables teachers who have limited time and resources to quickly identify when students are stuck and provide individual support accordingly.