Robotic and Virtual World Programming Labs to Stimulate Reasoning and Visual-Spatial Abilities

The individual's cognitive skills, academic performance and their relations with robot programming or virtual learning environment is a topic of a particular interest in the field of human-robot interaction. A pilot study was performed on a group of 36 lower secondary school students involved in the 32-hours laboratory activity based on the LEGO© Mindstorm NXT and the Microsoft Kodu Game Lab (KGL) tools. The laboratory was aimed at-first programming a robot and then at a more complete virtual world based on a narrative-designed scenario. The findings of the research are discussed in the light of the effectiveness of the use of robotics and virtual world programming as a meaningful and playful learning environment for improving children cognition.