Designing bio-inspired robotics workshops given language limitations

Educational robots are increasingly being used in schools as learning tools to support the development of skills such as computational thinking because of the growing number of technology-related jobs. Using robots as a tool inside the classroom has been proved to increase motivation, participation and inclination towards STEM subjects at both primary and secondary levels; however, language has usually not been considered as a mitigating factor. This paper reports our experience delivering nine workshops in English, using Thymio robots, to over two hundred students aged 9-12 across a week in the French cities of Nancy and Metz. Our goal was to test whether students would still have fun, learn something new and gain an interest in STEM even when the workshop was conducted in a foreign language. Our results indicate that using language that is easy to understand, although foreign, has a strong direct correlation (p~10-3) with having fun and that the latter positively affects learning and increased interest in STEM.