Extended Abstract book CIIDT2021 EISBN

CIIDT 2021
THE USE OF ROBOTICS FOR LEARNING MATHEMATICS AMONG PRIMARY
SCHOOL STUDENTS IN MALAYSIA: INVESTIGATING ACHIEVEMENT AND
INTEREST
Parameshvaran Varaman 1 , Jeya Amantha Kumar 1 and Siti Nazleen Abdul Rabu 3
1 Centre for Instructional Technology and Multimedia, Universiti Sains Malaysia
INTRODUCTION
Educational robots (ER) have been used in numerous educational interventions as a
mathematical teaching aid, especially in primary schools. There are many empirical findings
indicating that primary school students have limited interest in learning mathematics using the
traditional method (Mazana et al., 2018). One of the problem encountered in teaching and
learning mathematics in primary schools is strategizing methods that promotes develop
mathematical knowledge and understanding through inquiry activities that replicates real
applications (Althauser, 2017; Saundarajan et al., 2020). Furthermore, lack of participation
and real-world application strategies in these traditional methods has caused students to view
mathematics as a paper-based subject without practical application (Chotimah et al., 2018).
This perception caused dropping of grades in examinations. Therefore, this study aims to
identify how educational robots influence students’ achievement and interest in learning
mathematics.
METHODS
A total of 40 respondents (20 each for control and treatment group) from Year Five participated
in this study for learning the mathematical topic lines and angles, and the ER used is Rero-
Micro. The study used a quasi-experimental approach for duration of sixty minutes during
extracurricular activity. The content for the topic “lines & angles” where developed based on
Standard Curriculum Document Year 5 (Curriculum Development Centre, 2015). The
objective of the contents is recognizing right angles, acute angles and obtuse angles by
matching the angles accurately. The lesson plan for treatment group where designed based on
a hands-on approach where students need to work with robots while the lessons for control
group where design based on lecture method where power-point slides were used as a teaching
aid. To measure achievement, a pre-test and post-test were used while interest in learning
mathematics and attitude towards Rero-Micro were evaluated using a set of questionnaires.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Based on the findings analysed using SPSS Statistics 20 software, it was found that the ER
aided learning (M=47.47, S.D=9.18) performed almost same as power-point aided learning
(M=49.71, S.D=9.04) and the Mann-Whitney U test (U = 170, p = 0.42) for pre-test.
Subsequently, ER aided learning (M=69.74, S.D=9.11) performed better than power-point
aided learning (M=52.93, S.D=12.95), and the difference was significant based on Mann-
Whitney test at U= 63.5, p=0.01 in the post-test. Concurrently, as for interest in learning
mathematics, the ER group (M=3.53, S.D=0.59) showed more interest in learning the topic
than the traditional PowerPoint method (M=2.97, S.D=0.94) and the difference was significant
based on Mann-Whitney test at U= 3, p=0.02. The outcome of this study shows that ER can
positively contribute to improving primary students' achievement and interest in learning
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