Manuscript received November 9, 2022; revised December 12, 2022; accepted January 20, 2023.
Abstract—Research in Morocco shows a decrease in
motivation and learning of physics subjects for Moroccan
middle school students, which negatively impacts their school
achievement. The present study aims to identify the effect of
using educational robotics on middle school students’
motivation and learning of physics concepts, particularly
regarding the concept of temperature. A total of 90 first-year
middle school students from a public school in Meknes,
Morocco, voluntarily participated in this study. The students
were divided into two groups (46 for the experimental, and 44
for the control). The study was carried out during the 2020-2021
school year. The experimental group was taught the
temperature lesson using educational robotics (ER). While the
control group was taught the same lesson using a conventional
teaching method. Two indices were evaluated and analyzed.
The index of students’ achievement in acquiring the concept of
temperature was measured by pre-test (diagnostic test) and
post-test (formative evaluation test). The students’ motivation
index was measured by a Likert scale questionnaire. The data
collected were analyzed using SPSS software. The post-test
results of this study show that students in the experimental
group perform better than the control group students.
Additionally, the results of the motivation questionnaire show a
considerable improvement for the experimental group. The
results of the study recommend that teachers integrate
educational robotics into their courses to help students achieve
better results in the subject of physical sciences.
Index Terms—Educational robotics, Arduino, ICT,
project-based learning, motivation, thermodynamic concepts
Slimane Omari, Adnane Mamane, and Nadia Benjelloun are with the
Faculty of Sciences Dhar El Mahraz, Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah
University, Fez, Morocco.
Achraf Daoui is with the National School of Applied Sciences, Sidi
Mohamed Ben Abdellah University, Fez, Morocco.
Mhamed Ben Ouahi is with the Faculty of Science, Ibn Tofail University,
Kenitra, Morocco.
*Correspondence: slimane.omari2@usmba.ac.ma (S.O.)
Cite: Slimane Omari*, Adnane Mamane, Achraf Daoui, Mhamed Ben Ouahi, and Nadia Benjelloun, "Investigating the Effect of a Proposed Educational Robot on Students‘ Motivation and Learning of Thermodynamic Concepts," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 13, no. 7, pp. 1085-1093, 2023.
Copyright © 2023 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).