An Approach Based on Learning by Teaching to Support the Vertical

Alignment of the Educational Robotics Curriculum

Ilenia Fronza

1 a

, Gennaro Iaccarino

2 b

and Luis Corral

3 c

Free University of Bozen/Bolzano, Italy

I.I.S.S. “Galileo Galilei”, Bolzano, Italy

ITESM Campus Queretaro, Mexico

Keywords:

Learning by Teaching (LbT), Educational Robotics, Active Learning.

Abstract:

Vertical alignment delivers a smooth, organized curriculum. We explored an approach to apply Learning by

Teaching (LbT) to support the alignment of the educational robotics curriculum and, in turn, strengthen the

connections among different age groups to foster digital and social inclusion. We applied LbT in the context of

teaching an introductory course in robotics in a high school, and we summarized our experience in a report that

analyzes two relevant aspects: a) Understanding whether LbT supports teaching-students in learning robotics

concepts and b) outlining the effectiveness of LbT for interactive activities targeting younger children during

Science Festival. The observations reported in this work show that teaching-students are a relevant support

for actual instructors; moreover, their activity offers several advantages, including enhanced engagement and

active participation, which contribute to improved comprehension and knowledge transfer.

1 INTRODUCTION

Vertical alignment delivers a smooth, organized cur-

riculum that prepares students for the next grade or

level. For example, every teacher may introduce dif-

ferent educational robotics elements within a course

(e.g., hardware or programming languages); how-

ever, the basic structure focuses on a learning area for

each level. When a curriculum is vertically aligned,

the transition between school years becomes more

straightforward: the previous year’s class will have

provided all the necessary vocabulary, information,

content, and resources to prepare students for the fol-

lowing year. Therefore, vertical alignment, for exam-

ple, reduces the time needed to review previous con-

tent and reduces the gaps in the learning process.

Learning by teaching (LbT) is an educational ap-

proach in which individuals enhance their learning

and understanding of a subject by teaching it to oth-

ers (Cortese, 2005). By engaging in teaching activ-

ities, the sole process of being passive recipients of

knowledge is shifted, and learners take on the role

of mentors to share what they have learned with oth-

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0224-2452

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7776-7379

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9253-8873

ers. In LbT, teaching-students deﬁne their methods

and teaching approaches, implement them to teach the

topic, motivate, and ensure that the subject is under-

stood (Debban

e et al., 2023; Gartner et al., 1971; Du-

ran, 2017). Therefore, LbT can effectively teach key

-century skills (Aslan, 2015). Learning starts dur-

ing the preparation phase and is reinforced by teach-

ing (Aslan, 2015). Reﬂection during and after the

teaching process helps evaluate the comprehension of

concepts and the teaching methods (Chi et al., 2001).

This work aims to increase the vertical alignment

of the educational robotics curriculum that, start-

ing from elementary school (6-10 years), accompa-

nies children in their personal growth and eventu-

ally serves as a pivot to evolve from learning-student

to teaching-student through LbT. Using LbT sup-

ports an intergenerational program and the subsequent

strengthening of connections among different age

groups and promotion of experience sharing (Phang

et al., 2023), which, in turn, fosters digital and social

inclusion, i.e., one of the critical success factors of

smart cities/villages (Shin et al., 2021).

To pursue our objective, we explored an approach

to apply LbT in the context of teaching an intro-

ductory robotics course in high schools: teaching-

students learn robotics concepts and create a set of

ﬂip cards as teaching material for an interactive expe-

Fronza, I., Iaccarino, G. and Corral, L.

An Approach Based on Learning by Teaching to Support the Vertical Alignment of the Educational Robotics Curriculum.

DOI: 10.5220/0012551500003693

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2024) - Volume 2, pages 307-316

ISBN: 978-989-758-697-2; ISSN: 2184-5026

307

rience to let children move their ﬁrst steps in robotics.

As a context for the interactive experience, we chose

a Science Festival based on the assumption that these

events attract a broad audience that is curious and mo-

tivated to learn. We summarized our experience in a

report to analyze two relevant aspects:

• Understand whether LbT beneﬁts teaching-

students in learning robotics concepts.

• Outline the effectiveness of LbT for interactive ac-

tivities targeting younger children during Science

Festivals.

The strategy and activities described in this pa-

per include: (1) Design a set of robotics activities

addressed to a non-expert audience participating in a

Science Festival in a mid-size city, in which the vol-

ume of participants makes the involvement of many

instructors essential; (2) Identify a team of students

to serve as teaching-students, leveraging the robotic

concepts they gained at the school; (3) Work along

with teaching-students in the process of creating the

teaching material. In particular, teaching-students

created ﬂip cards to facilitate large and heterogeneous

groups of participants (Fronza and Pahl, 2019); (4)

Teaching-students peered at younger students during

the Science Festival. Through the success of the activ-

ity and our observations, we outline how the teaching-

students successfully learned the robotics concepts,

deepened their understanding while teaching, and ex-

ercised their soft skills.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Sec-

tion 2 investigates the state of LbT; Section 3 de-

scribes the setting and fundamentals of our experi-

ence report; Section 4 discusses results and lessons

learned; and Section 5 establishes directions for fu-

ture work and draws conclusions.

2 BACKGROUND AND RELATED

WORK

2.1 On Student/Mentor-Led Learning

Student-led and mentor-led learning has emerged as

relevant topic for the research and practice of educa-

tion. With the many paradigm shifts in education that

came with and after the pandemic emergency, having

a solid support network became paramount in educa-

tion processes. The research found that peer mentor-

ing positively impacts motivation, studying behavior,

and exam results (Hardt et al., 2022). A comprehen-

sive literature survey discusses several concepts en-

compassing mentor-led learning, including reciprocal

teaching, peer-assisted tutoring, and self-explanatory

teaching (Biswas et al., 2005).

Learning by Teaching (Gartner et al., 1971) is a

pedagogical method where teaching-students teach to

learning-students. The beneﬁts of LbT include more

effective learning of concepts, higher participation,

better learning satisfaction, development of teamwork

skills, and promotion of higher-order thinking (Deb-

ban

e et al., 2023). Furthermore, studies have shown

the better performance of students who learned mate-

rial with the expectation that they would be required

to teach it (Benware and Deci, 1984). While peer

tutoring aims to educate both tutor and tutee, LbT

focuses on the teaching-student’s learning (Debban

et al., 2023).

A mentor-led environment creates a relationship

in which a more senior individual provides guidance

and support to junior members. As a main advantage,

the peer-to-peer connection eases knowledge transfer

and harnesses social support behaviors, resulting in

positive perceptions of the relationship’s effectiveness

and underlying trust (Trainer et al., 2017). Moreover,

learning-students are more at ease discussing sensi-

tive topics such as assessment and room for error with

a colleague rather than a member of a formal teach-

ing staff (Iacob and Faily, 2020). Nevertheless, some

commonly identiﬁed shortcomings are that learning-

students might question the accuracy of the informa-

tion provided by the teaching-students, and ask for

validation from the teaching staff (Iacob and Faily,

2020). Moreover, this structure requires several per-

sonal traits, at the risk that peers might not take the

knowledge transfer session seriously (Aslan, 2015).

Student/mentor-led learning unleashes a critical

potential for both sides (i.e., teaching-student and

learning-student). For example, in intensive edu-

cational experiences (such as coding camps), where

the volume of participants is high, and teaching staff

struggles to supervise all participants closely, count-

ing on the support of tutors/teaching students as-

sists in widening the impact of the educational pro-

cess, helping others to learn and, in turn, beneﬁt

from an effective learning environment (Fronza et al.,

2021). Special attention deserves the structure of role-

switching where both individuals take and swap the

role of mentor and mentee, using reinforcement learn-

ing to permit participants to adapt and empower the

impact of mentorship on learning and engagement

(Roscoe and Chi, 2007).

2.2 On Lifelong Learning Competences

Adapting Computer Science education to meet the

needs of a rapidly changing technological landscape

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308

by cultivating a series of lifelong learning competen-

cies (Area, 2018) that are technology-agnostic pre-

pares children to adopt any new technology quickly

and enable themselves and others to learn.

According to the European Commission, Mem-

ber States should foster (starting at early ages and

maintaining the focus on lifelong learning) the devel-

opment of digital literacy and technology awareness

competencies to boost suitability for employment, so-

cial inclusion, and active citizenship. Lifelong learn-

ing competencies, which can be helpful in many dif-

ferent contexts, are a combination of (Area, 2018): a)

Knowledge: facts, ﬁgures, concepts, ideas, and theo-

ries that are already established and support the under-

standing of a particular area or subject; b) Skills: the

ability to carry out processes and use knowledge to

achieve results; and c) Attitudes: the disposition and

mindsets to act or react to ideas, persons or situations.

The European Reference Framework identiﬁes

eight key competencies (Area, 2018) that embed

problem-solving, teamwork, creativity, and intercul-

tural skills. Digital competence involves the conﬁ-

dent, critical, and responsible use of and engagement

with digital technologies for learning, work, and so-

cial participation. Individuals should be able to use

digital technologies to support their active citizen-

ship and social inclusion, collaboration with others,

and creativity toward personal, social, or commercial

goals. To do that, individuals should understand how

digital technologies work and how to use them to sup-

port communication, creativity, and innovation, being

aware of opportunities, limitations, effects, and risks.

Engagement with digital technologies and content re-

quires a reﬂective, critical, curious, open-minded, and

forward-looking attitude to their evolution. It also re-

quires an ethical, safe, and responsible approach to

using these tools. We take these recommendations as

a beacon to deﬁne a vertical curriculum that, start-

ing from elementary school, accompanies children in

gaining skills and building conﬁdence to pivot their

roles as learners and progress from pupil to teacher as

required for LbT activities.

3 EXPERIENCE REPORT

This section offers a general account of the experience

of working in a robotics class, providing valuable

insights into the practice of transferring knowledge

and fostering technological curiosity and proﬁciency

among young learners. As an experience report, the

description is grounded in observations, interactions,

and reﬂective practices describing a ﬁrst-hand expe-

rience of the challenges and opportunities associated

with facilitating a simpliﬁed robotics curriculum that

nurtures critical thinking, problem-solving abilities,

and collaboration skills.

3.1 Experience Setting

To exercise LbT, we chose a public Science Festival in

a mid-size city (Bolzano, Italy), a free-to-attend fam-

ily science day showcasing the leading edge in Sci-

ence, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) to

encourage young people to study science in schools

and universities (Canovan, 2019; DeWitt et al., 2016).

Indeed, the level of family interest in science has a

strong inﬂuence on future STEM participation (Dab-

ney et al., 2013). We selected this context because

Science Festivals attract a broad, non-expert, curious,

and motivated to-learn population. The Science Festi-

val showcased various talks, demonstrations, exhibi-

tions, and interactive experiences, all centered around

the theme of “Journey”. The exhibitors were mainly

research centers and universities from the region.

The activity described in this work resulted from

a university-school collaboration. The idea of involv-

ing high school students during the Science Festival

was motivated by the documented positive effect of

neer-peer mentoring on increasing the interest and

engagement of high school students studying STEM

disciplines (Tenenbaum et al., 2014). Moreover, so-

cial congruence (Bugaj et al., 2019) facilitates infor-

mal/empathetic communication and compensates for

the lack of knowledge and expertise because teaching-

students provide explanations more likely to meet the

learners’ needs. Finally, the number of participants

in the Science Festival (usually around 2000 people

per day) made it essential to involve many instruc-

tors, which could motivate teaching-students (Fronza

et al., 2023) by increasing the sense of responsibility

given by the crucial role they have to play.

3.2 Participants

The 12 teaching-students (aged 15) attended a Sci-

entiﬁc High School of Applied Sciences (four-year

course). The group was gender-balanced (5F, 7M)

and did not include students with special educational

needs or cognitive diseases. Cultural and family back-

grounds were homogeneous. An experimental class

of 12 units represented a context conducive to educa-

tional innovation (Fronza et al., 2020). As described

hereafter, the teaching-students completed the three

stages of LbT according to the framework shown in

Figure 1(Bargh and Schul, 1980).

An Approach Based on Learning by Teaching to Support the Vertical Alignment of the Educational Robotics Curriculum

309

Preparing to teach

Teaching-students prepare

themselves to teach (without

actually teaching)

Explaining to others

Teaching-students simulate the

interactions with learners

Interacting with others

Teaching-students teach using

the material they have prepared

Section 3.3

Section 3.4

Section 3.5

Figure 1: The three stages of LbT (Bargh and Schul, 1980):

deﬁnition and mapping to the Sections of this paper that

describe their implementation.

3.3 Preparing to Teach

In this phase, the teaching-students prepared them-

selves to teach (without actually teaching). This ac-

tivity promotes learning because knowing to teach

others motivates students beyond regular studying

(Fiorella and Mayer, 2015).

Initially, teaching-students completed a training

course of about 12 hours in which they acquired the

basic skills of building LEGO-EV3 robots with two-

wheel drive-based motion and implementing motion

programs using color, distance, and touch sensors.

Teaching-students also learned how to use the de-

vice’s audio recording and playback tools and manage

the display. The training started with the construc-

tion of the LEGO-EV3 robots and continued with the

use of all the motors and sensors made available by

the educational kit. Students worked in pairs to solve

problems of increasing difﬁculty, in which all the pro-

gramming blocks available were necessary. Each new

issue required using/modifying the implementation

of the previous one to promote learning (Vygotsky,

1978) and introduced the fundamental concept of the

teaching material. At the end of the training phase,

all the participants could implement block-based al-

gorithms to solve educational robotics problems.

Afterward, teaching-students worked for 8 hours

in groups (2 or 3 people) to create a set of ﬂip cards

as teaching material. Each group had to devise a story

of fantasy or an adventure scenario to explore all the

dimensions of the child (i.e., cognitive, affective, mo-

tivational, and emotional) as deﬁned by the cognitive

psychologist J. Bruner (Bruner, 1996). Each story had

to be a journey to meet the requirements of the Sci-

ence Festival. Then, students divided the journey into

steps and created a card for each step, in which one

needed to use all the robotics tools acquired during

the training phase (motors, input through the color,

touch, distance sensors, and audio).

The participants created the stories by following

the “puppet metaphor” (Figure 2), which illustrates

the narrative style closest to children between 6 and

10 years old (Wright, 1998). The puppet’s head repre-

sents the story’s introduction (i.e., who, where, when).

Much more substantial, the puppet’s body represents

the story’s development (i.e., what happens), bringing

the child closer to the characters by working alongside

them. Finally, the puppet’s feet represent the conclu-

sion, which brieﬂy shows how the story ends: a happy

ending generated by a positive event.

Figure 2: The “puppet metaphor” illustrates the narrative

style that is closest to children between the ages of 6 and 10

(Wright, 1998). The puppet’s head represents the introduc-

tion of the story, which is not very big but provides impor-

tant details such as who, where, and when. The larger body

of the puppet represents the story’s development, which in-

cludes unexpected events and twists. Finally, the feet of the

puppet, which are smaller than the body, represent the ﬁnal

twist and the happy ending.

Using the “puppet metaphor”, the teaching-

students were asked to write a story by following

the following tips, which are widely used in teaching

through storytelling (Wright, 1995):

• Think about the plot: imagine a captivating and

engaging story by choosing who, where, and when

ﬁrst.

• Imagine the main character: deﬁne the character-

istics of the main character that will interact with

the child.

• Deﬁne simple problems: include in the story situ-

ations the main character must face with the child

by programming and using the robot.

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310

• The implication of the story: after a moment of

maximum tension, something positive and excit-

ing must happen (i.e., the epilogue), leading to a

happy ending.

• Happy ending, with an unexpected twist.

For the preparation of the ﬂip cards, we provided

the following requirements to the students:

• One side of the card shall describe one part of the

story (in a language appropriate for 6-10-year-old

children), i.e., tell the child the mission that the

robot has to accomplish.

• The back of the card shall provide hints to help the

child with programming, i.e., show a picture of

the code block, the most suitable hardware (motor

or sensor), or the wizard for recording and playing

sounds (Figure 3).

• Each card shall require an additional program-

ming concept to the previous one to encourage

stepwise learning.

Figure 3: Example of ﬂip cards: the proposed mission re-

quires using the loop block, introduced in the previous mis-

sion by changing the output test.

This phase created ﬁve sets of ﬂip cards, each with

12 cards. As shown in Figure 4, in each set, the ﬁrst

and last cards represent the preface and the happy

ending; the middle ten cards allow the implementa-

tion of the fundamental components of the robot men-

tioned above in steps of increasing difﬁculty (i.e., the

missions). The ﬁrst mission always involves build-

ing a robot component; the others require block-based

programming. Each set of ﬂip cards has a main char-

acter, a fantasy or adventure scenario, a series of mis-

sions of increasing difﬁculty that the child must com-

plete by programming the robot, and a happy ending

following the ten missions.

3.4 Explaining to Others

During this phase, the teaching-students actively

used the teaching material meaningfully (Fiorella and

Mayer, 2015) by simulating the interaction with chil-

dren. A teaching-student took the role of a learning-

student to stimulate that kind of interaction with

teaching-students. Other teaching-students observed

the interaction, commenting on it and advising on im-

provement. In order to validate the process of knowl-

edge transfer, we explored what speciﬁc concepts

were understood and interpreted, paying attention to

a simpliﬁed language and simulating the transition to

different languages according to the children’s needs.

3.5 Interacting with Others

This phase encourages students to reﬂect on their un-

derstanding of the material while teaching (Fiorella

and Mayer, 2015). We implemented it during a Sci-

ence Festival, where participants coordinated an inter-

active experience to let children take their ﬁrst steps

in robotics.

The activity took place in a room with free en-

trance and no reservation required. Five tables (i.e.,

one table per set of ﬂip cards) surrounded by chairs

were in the room. On each table (Figure 5) were

a robot, a laptop, materials for unfolding the story

(e.g., obstacles), and ﬂip cards. Each table was coor-

dinated by 2-3 teaching-students, usually those who

had created the corresponding set of ﬂip cards; how-

ever, since they knew all the set of ﬂip cards, teaching-

students changed tables throughout the day to substi-

tute others during breaks, to change topics, or support

others in managing speciﬁc needs (e.g., language and

age).

Children (i.e., learning-students) could either ap-

proach the tables spontaneously or were kindly in-

vited by the teaching-students to come. The teaching-

students knew that the children could leave at each

point without completing all of the missions in the

ﬂip cards or, conversely, stop and ask for more. The

activity lasted 8 hours and hosted dozens of children.

3.6 Data Collection, Analysis, and

Interpretation

As detailed in Table 1, in this work, we adopted mul-

tiple data collection types (Creswell and Creswell,

2017):

• Observations were semi-structured, i.e., the re-

searchers ﬁlled in a form to annotate if they could

observe behaviors or events related to LbT in each

phase.

An Approach Based on Learning by Teaching to Support the Vertical Alignment of the Educational Robotics Curriculum

311

Figure 4: Structure of a set of ﬂip cards. The ﬁrst and last cards represent the preface and the happy ending; the other

cards allow the story’s development as missions. The ﬁrst mission involves building a robot component, while the others

require block-based programming. In the middle of the story (cards 6-8), there is the moment of maximum tension before the

”epilogue” (cards 9-10), leading to the happy ending.

Figure 5: Setting of the “interacting with others” phase.

• Interviews during a self-reﬂection phase after the

Science Festival: researchers engaged teaching-

students in focus group interviews to elicit views

and opinions complementing the observations.

Collected data were then categorized and summa-

rized to analyze two aspects: 1) understand whether

LbT beneﬁts teaching-students in learning robotics

concepts, and 2) outline the effectiveness of LbT for

interactive activities targeting younger children dur-

ing Science Festivals.

Table 1: Data collection strategy.

Type Collection approach

Observations Researchers used an agreed ob-

servational protocol to collect

ﬁeld notes without intervention

on the target population. Stu-

dents’ activities were observed,

focusing on how they applied

their knowledge to support each

other.

Interviews Researchers conducted focus

group interviews using an

agreed-upon protocol during

self-reﬂection after the Science

Festival. Participants discussed

areas of improvement, reorga-

nized their knowledge, deduced

errors, and repaired them.

4 RESULTS

This section discusses the signiﬁcance of knowledge

acquisition and the result of the process through

which participants exercised or gained new knowl-

edge. We structured the summary of our observations

in two parts: discussing the central insight gained and

additional learnings that we considered to have nur-

CSEDU 2024 - 16th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

312

tured the learning process and paved the way for im-

proved experiences.

4.1 Major Learnings

As major learnings, we identiﬁed and analyzed traits

that allowed us to identify patterns and connections

to elaborate on LbT as an instrumental strategy in the

learning process that may eventually support a lasting

educational outcome. We summarized the results to

analyze the following two relevant aspects.

1. Understand whether LbT beneﬁts teaching-

students in learning robotics concepts.

Conﬁrming the previous literature in the ﬁeld, in

our experience, LbT enhanced learning by forcing the

teaching-students to retrieve previously studied in-

formation to contextualize it differently (Koh et al.,

2018). In order to create the missions in the ﬂip cards,

teaching-students learned to use all the blocks of the

programming language according to the speciﬁc need,

thus improving their problem-solving skills. More-

over, teaching-students learned to simplify and opti-

mize the code by witnessing children’s programming

mistakes. Finally, they improved their ability to com-

municate robotics concepts by rephrasing them sev-

eral times, if needed, based on the learner’s needs and

difﬁculties.

By the end of the experience, the teaching-

students had a solid grasp of the robotics concepts

learned. They were also curious to extend their

knowledge to solve new challenges, which often

emerged from the children’s questions during the Sci-

ence Festival. In this regard, during the event, we

could observe a decisive change in the attitude of the

teaching-students compared to regular classes: feel-

ing a responsibility to respond to children and not

wanting to disappoint them, they helped each other.

They worked to ﬁnd a solution when they did not

know an answer immediately.

2. Outline the effectiveness of LbT for interactive

activities targeting younger children during Science

Festivals.

The teaching-students successfully managed the

activity, helped each other, and demonstrated a high

level of engagement and sense of responsibility con-

cerning the event management (for instance, organiz-

ing to take turns for lunch to avoid leaving the stand

unattended). After being more conservative in their

communication engagement at the beginning of the

activity, they gained conﬁdence up to being able to

adapt activities and narratives to the context and lan-

guage that caters to different age segments, e.g., very

young children (Figure 6) and adults. Thanks to the

ﬂip cards, the teaching-students involved children at

different levels: those who stayed only for two cards

and then had to go and those who asked for additional

missions after ﬁnishing the set of ﬂip cards.

Figure 6: A teaching-student interacting with a very young

child.

At the end of the Science Festival, teaching-

students got back home with enthusiasm, so much so

that parents wrote thank-you notes to the organizing

school a few days after the event. Eight months af-

ter the project, the teaching-students remember all the

activity steps, have internalized the robotics concepts,

and can reproduce them naturally. They all remem-

ber the project positively, meaning it left a positive

imprint on their lives. They all positively responded

when asked if they would be willing to repeat the ac-

tivity by bringing in other STEAM concepts.

4.2 Other Lessons Learned

In addition to the insight gained in the LbT process,

we synthesize below the lessons we learned during

this experience:

• Twelve hours of training were sufﬁcient for teach-

ing students to acquire the basic concepts of

robotics and then be able to explain these concepts

to children.

• Teaching-students’ feedback was overall positive,

but everyone reported improvement opportunities,

especially in communicating simpliﬁed concepts.

As a lesson learned, customized, adapted lan-

guage should be explored in more detail in the

learning process (e.g., when explaining complex

concepts to younger children).

• The ﬂip cards proved to be a beneﬁcial resource to

support teaching and learning. After completing

the activity, we recommend investing time with

the teaching-students to improve the content of

the ﬂip cards based on the experience and insight

gained in the learning activity.

An Approach Based on Learning by Teaching to Support the Vertical Alignment of the Educational Robotics Curriculum

313

• Simulations before “interacting with others” are

essential to lessen some tension at the beginning

of the Science Festival. A smaller-scale edition of

the activity with a small group of children might

work even better.

• The presented activity is multidisciplinary and

leaves room for exercising different competen-

cies and adapting them to different learning pref-

erences and interests. For instance, the conver-

sations could mesh diverse topics like Computer

Science or Civic Education.

• Our observations about the pace and natural ﬂow

of the conversation conﬁrm that LbT exercises

and puts teaching-students’ soft skills into prac-

tice.

We believe that these lessons learned can be help-

ful to enhance the research process and help identify

future development areas.

5 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE

WORK

According to the observations collected in the expe-

rience presented in this work, LbT fosters a support-

ive and engaging learning environment and promotes

trust and knowledge retention. Our insight and ma-

jor takeaway is that learning-students improved their

overall learning experience, and teaching-students

also exercised the development of essential soft skills,

such as communication, critical thinking, and knowl-

edge transfer. These results evidence that LbT can be

used as a strategy for promoting vertical alignment of

the educational robotics curriculum: while interact-

ing, different age groups can share experiences, ac-

quire micro-language skills (i.e., the speciﬁc termi-

nology of disciplinary and professional sectors), and

ﬁnd/provide the necessary support and motivation for

transitioning between school years.

In addition, this work found that utilizing LbT

during the Science Festival offered key advantages.

It created a relatable and comfortable learning atmo-

sphere, as the teaching-students shared similar expe-

riences and perspectives with learning-students. This

familiarity allowed for effective communication, em-

pathy, and the building of trust, which in turn fa-

cilitated engagement and active participation. The

teaching-students’ previous knowledge of robotics,

combined with their ability to explain concepts in

simple terms, contributed to improved comprehen-

sion and enhanced knowledge transfer. Furthermore,

our experience draws attention to the signiﬁcance of

creating an inclusive and supportive learning environ-

ment that adapts to participants’ diverse needs and in-

terests.

In our experience, the Science Festival was an

excellent context for teaching-students to challenge

themselves: the number of participants made clear

the importance of their contribution and increased the

sense of responsibility given by the crucial role they

have to play. However, some tension was also present

despite the simulations before the event; for this rea-

son, a smaller-scale edition of the activity with a small

group of children might be preferable.

The type of teaching material created by the

teaching-students (i.e., the ﬂip cards) has proven valu-

able as teaching materials for several reasons. For

example, they provided a route for teaching-students

to follow, avoiding uncertainty about how to start or

continue; for this to happen, however, the teaching-

students must create the ﬂip cards themselves. More-

over, ﬂip cards helped involve children at different

levels: those who stayed only for two cards and those

who asked for additional missions instead.

The ﬁndings of this experience report support the

notion that teaching-students can effectively enhance

the learning experience of their fellow students, cul-

tivating abilities that contribute beyond technical ed-

ucation and construct lifelong learning. Future work

may explore speciﬁc strategies teaching-students em-

ploy and additional variables contributing to their ef-

fectiveness (e.g., age gap). This experience advocates

for the formal integration of LbT within educational

institutions as a fundamental strategy to strengthen

more traditional methods to teach robotics concepts.

Moreover, the approach proposed in this work could

be applied to any STEM discipline, such as chem-

istry, physics, biology, and electronics, which is in the

authors’ plans for the future. For example, we plan

to customize the approach presented in this paper to

introduce children to the basic principles of Genera-

tive Artiﬁcial Intelligence: high school students could

learn the principles of effective prompting and build

teaching material to teach younger students how to

use ChatGPT.

Finally, exploring how the proposed approach

could support students while learning micro-language

in a foreign language through the linguistic mediation

of teachers-students would be interesting.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This study was funded by the European Union -

NextGenerationEU, in the framework of the consor-

tium iNEST - Interconnected Nord-Est Innovation

Ecosystem (PNRR, Missione 4 Componente 2, Inves-

CSEDU 2024 - 16th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

314

timento 1.5 D.D. 1058 23/06/2022, ECS 00000043 –

Spoke1, RT1A, CUP I43C22000250006). The views

and opinions expressed are solely those of the authors

and do not necessarily reﬂect those of the European

Union, nor can the European Union be held responsi-

ble for them.

We want to gratefully acknowledge the contribu-

tion of our teaching-students, whose volunteer partic-

ipation was essential to the object of study.

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