Youth Embodied Communication and Collaboration in Making

Abstract

Making activities in non-formal learning has the potential to improve the technical and social skills of youth. To unpack those potentials in this empirical study we examine youth collaboration and communication in a making activity via the lens of embodied cognition. We analyzed youth interactions within the group and with the educational robot, Dash. Findings reveal three ways of youth embodied communication - Peer-feedback, Group Negotiation, and Developing Shared Meaning - while collaborating on a making activity. Also, youth were found personifying and embodying Dash to take its perspective while programming it to perform specific actions. Different modalities (e.g., gestures, bodily actions, speech) within the activity enabled students to collaborate by communicating with each other and Dash effectively. These findings suggest that the use of an embodied lens in making activities can provide useful insights to improve youth engagement, communication, collaboration, and conceptual knowledge.