COLLABORATIVE EDUCATIONAL ROBOTICS FOR THE INCLUSION OF CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES

. This literature review aims to collect systematically peer-reviewed research articles published in scientific journals that focus on the participation of children with disabilities in collaborative educational robotics activities. After systematic research, using three major digital scientific libraries, we full-screened eleven research studies that were implemented in inclusive or special settings and published during the period 2010-2022. These articles were selected as they described in detail the psycho-pedagogical methods that were used by the researchers to foster the participation of children with disabilities in collaborative educational robotics activities. The psycho-pedagogical methods have been categorized and presented critically in relation to the research methods and results. Finally, the discussion section of this review highlights the need of promoting collaborative methods in the context of inclusive educational robotics environments.


Introduction
Educational Robotics (ΕR) is a promising field with great educational challenges. ER introduces children from an early age to programming, engaging them in STEM scientific concepts within an authentic and motivating educational context (Yuen et al., 2014). Through ER students improve creativity, logical reasoning, critical thinking (Blanchard et al., 2010;Miller et al., 2008;Yuen et al., 2014), problem-solving, social interaction, collaboration, and teamwork (Benitti, 2012). In the field of ER specific types of robots are being used. These are robots that can easily be programmed by children, themselves, in order to complete specific tasks or solve problems in the context of short scale projects (Pivetti et al., 2020). Students that are being engaged in ER projects work together in four main tasks: on designing, building, coding, and testing the educational robots (Yuen et al., 2014). Therefore, ER activities create a context in which students collaborate, sharing thoughts and synthesising ideas to enrich their solutions. More experienced can help less-experienced ones. Sufficient scaffolding by the teacher or by the more experienced peers support students to use higher-order cognitive processes in the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978). It is well documented that collaboration is connected with higher levels of achievement and positive attitudes to the learning and knowledge requirements process (Bruffee, 1995). Even programming is more effective when it is collaborative (McDowell et al., 2002).
Students, through collaboration, acquire social skills such as explicit, and implicit communication, monitoring, and coordination, and commitment to the common goals, persistence, and patience (Johnson & Hyde, 2003). Joint attention, request for help, management of conflict interventional introduction and social relations, as reported by ICF-CY, are the prerequisites for the effective collaboration (The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health for Children and Youth). Social skills have never been as important as they are in the 21st century, where mediated communication is established, and collaboration networks determine an individual's professional and social success.
The occurrence of possible difficulties in social skills can adversely affect the personal development and the social and/or professional relationships of the individual. Social dysfunctions are often more pronounced in people with mental, cognitive, or developmental disabilities, diagnosed with Neurodevelopmental Disorders (ND) (Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Intellectual Disability (ID), Down Syndrome (DS), Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) Learning Disabilities (LD)) and social phobia. These conditions limit the ability to participate adequately and satisfactorily in social and learning environments (Bishop, 2010).
The increasing research interest in how the ER collaborative projects could facilitate the social interactions or motivate and enhance the collaboration of children with ND in special or inclusive educational settings is ascertained (Werry et al., 2001;Wainer et al., 2010;Lindsay, 2011;Tsiomi & Nanou, 2020;Nanou et al., 2022;Yuen et al., 2014). It is not only that ER reveals hidden potentials and skills (Karna-Lin et al., 2006), but also that supports and motivates the manifestation of social behaviours for children with disabilities in a variety of communication contexts. The characteristics and the role that the educational robots (ERs) are here to play, the learning objectives of the educational processes and the quality of the interactions that children with disabilities develop when they participate in the collaborative ER activities are the focus of research internationally (Huskens et al., 2013;Huijnen et al., 2019, Werry et al., 2001Wainer et al., 2010;Lindsay, 2011;Tsiomi & Nanou, 2020;Nanou et al., 2022;Yuen et al., 2014). The strong research interest regarding the role of educational robots in the enhancement of social skills is developed in addition by the need to utilise ER in inclusive environments as, since 2000, the inclusive education through which the 21 st -Century skills are equally cultivated for all students has been promoted internationally (UNESCO, 2016).
The present review aims to seek, through the international literature, remarkable research outcomes on the use of ER technologies as facilitators for social interaction of children with mental, cognitive, or developmental disabilities (ND) in ER collaborative educational settings and record the psycho-pedagogical methods that are being used to foster collaborative behaviours. This review aims at answering the following research questions: 1. Are there any published researches on collaboration of children or adolescences with ND during ER activities? Are those researches implemented in inclusive or special environments? 2. Do they present adaptations to foster participation in ER? 3. Do they present psycho-pedagogical methods to foster collaboration in ER?

Related Work
Most of the researches on the social skills' development of children with disabilities had been conducted by the researchers of Social Assistant Robots (SAR). SAR factions as social mediators to promote social interaction of children with autism or intellectual disabilities (Hedgecock et al., 2014). They support children with autism to initiate social interaction with a parent, a sibling, or a therapist (Fridin & Yaakobi, 2011), they are being used to access children's imitation ability or to teach simple coordinated behaviours (Billard et al., 2007). Social Assistant Robots, in general, support vulnerable groups, ranging in age, impairment, or need, through social interaction (Feil-Seifer & Matarić, 2005). The goal of SAR is to create the best circumstances for human-robot interaction for the purpose of giving vulnerable groups assistance or progress in learning or rehabilitation etc. There are a lot of literature reviews on the use of SAR for therapeutic reasons (Papakostas et al., 2021).
In the field of ER, systematic research reviews have been conducted to collect and analyse how the educational robots are being used in special educational for children with autism (Pennisi et al., 2016) or other kind of disabilities (Miguel Cruz et al., 2017). A more recent review focused on collecting and analysing research focuses on ER projects for children with neurodevelopmental disorders (Pivetti et al., 2020). A most current review focus on ER researches that present results concerning inclusion of children with disabilities (Syriopoulou-Delli et al., 2021).
In order for ER to be accessible to children with ND, specific collaborative methods have to be designed, implemented, and assessed. It is well documented that collaborative robotics projects motivate students not only to participate in STEM activities and learn scientific concepts, but to develop collaborative behaviours and peer interaction. As established, there is a need to concentrate on research on ER with the aim of social skills development and especially collaboration skills of children with autism as ER activities are mainly collaborative (Yuen et al., 2014). Very few studies focus on robotics as a facilitator for social interaction among students with ND in special or inclusive settings (Nanou et al., 2022;Wainer et al., 2010). There is a lack of a systematic review of research focused on the use of educational robots as facilitators for social interaction and collaboration with participating children with ND.

Research Methodology
This literature review was based on the methodology of Grant & Booth (2009), to answer the research questions with the specific aim to collect the research on ER collaborative projects with the participation of children with ND (ASD, ID, DS, and ADHD, LD) that were published in peer-reviewed scientific journals after 2010 till 2022. The review research has been conducted from January 2022 to April 2022 in multiple digital libraries including Web of Science (webofknowledge.com), Scopus and Google Scholar. The keywords "intellectual and developmental disability", "educational robot(s)", and "collaboration" were applied in the textsearch fields (i.e., title, abstract, keywords, full text), using several logical combinations of "AND" and "OR". Figure 1, depicts the selection process, showing each stage of the research procedure.
In total, 1063 references were found. After the removal of 250 duplicates remained 813 articles for the first screening. Three main inclusive criteria were applied:  The study must be published in peer-reviewed journals in English  The study must be dedicated to ND  The study must focus on the use of one or more ERs (programmable by children)

Figure 1 The selection process and each stage of the review
We started by first screening the articles by their titles and abstracts based on the inclusion criteria. After the first screening, 720 articles were rejected and 93 remained for full-text screening. In the full screening, we applied two main inclusion criteria:  The study must take place in a special or inclusive educational setting  The study must include an ER collaboration experiment or evaluated model of or a design of an associated product for use by participant/s in teamwork After a thorough reading, 82 articles were rejected, and 11 research studies remained for the review that met the inclusion criteria.

Results
In further analysis, as presented in Table 1, we reviewed eleven (11) research studies according to the following methodological elements, type of intellectual or developmental disability, setting (special/inclusive), age range, ER kit, the aim of the research, adaptations, duration of the intervention, psycho-pedagogical method of team collaboration, research methods, and results.
The eleven research articles that were selected for analysis constitute empirical research on collaborative ER projects that were conducted with the participation of a group of children or adolescents with all kinds of ND, aged 5-17 years old. Five of the selected research studies (45%) took place in inclusive settings, two in inclusive schools (n=2, per=18%), two in inclusive after school clubs (n=2, per=18%) and one in a summer school club (n=1, per=9%). Six of them (n=6, per=54%) took place in special education settings, two in special schools (n=2, per=18%), two in hospitals (n=2, per=18%), two in after School clubs (n=2, 18%). Independently of the number of participants, in most of the research, (9/11, per=81%) they were divided into groups of 2 or 3 children. An exception was the two of the selected research studies that were conducted in school settings where the participants were divided into groups of 6 children. The groups in inclusive settings were in an analogy 1:2 (1 child with Disabilities/2 Typical Development), or 1:1 (1 Dis/1 TD). Only two of the selected researchers addressed preschool children, (n=1, per=18%) while the other ten addressed primary school children (6-14 years old). Concerning the kind of robot, two research teams used Bee-Bot (n=2, per=18%), three used LEGO WeDo (n=3, per=27%), one the KIBO (n=1, per=9%), and the other five the LEGO Mindstorms (n=5, per=45%). Concerning the aim of the studies seven (63%) were focused on social skills and especially, collaboration (n=2, 18%), participation (n=2, per=18%), interaction (n=1, per=9%), emotional 1 (n=1, 9%), and communication (n=1, per=9%). The next four researchers (36%) addressed the investigation of the teamwork and collaboration in cognitive domains such as executive functions (n=2, per=18%), STEM (n=1, per=9%), and coding (n=1, per=9%).
The mean time of the collaborative ER projects duration was 14 h, SD 5,9. In more detail, in three articles (36%) the authors implemented ER projects for 16,5-18 h, in four (36%) for 10-12 h, in one for 27 h, in another one for 8h, and only one for 39,5h (7,5 hours of training were held in class while 32 hours took place online). The longest ER projects took place in inclusive schools with the use of the LEGO Mindstorms kit and the shortest in disabled preschoolers (DS) with the Bee-Bot.
In the exception of three of the selected research articles, where the staff was not specified, an expert in ER was included in the support team of the children in the inclusive or special setting, in parallel with the teachers or the therapists, in order for the ER activities to be performed. Volunteers and therapists or teachers supported the ER education of the children with disabilities at schools inside the hospital or in the afterschool activities.
Concerning the methods of collaboration among the members of the group of participants in ER activities, two of the selected studies (18%) emphasize the need to be introduced specific rules necessary for group collaboration, and in two studies (18%) there are not any methods that were introduced as their aim was to observe how the interaction and collaboration will be developed spontaneously between the members of the group while playing or programming of ΕR tools, while in the remaining three (27%) of the selected research studies more general indirect methods are described.
Indirect methods of collaboration that are being presented in three studies (27%) are presented below:  small groups division or one to one collaboration (3/3)  gradually integration from one-to-one interaction with the adult mediation to bigger groups (1/3)  group thinking (1/3)  adult mediation for relational reinforcement (3/3)  Direct Methods of collaboration are described as being implemented in the five of the selected articles (45%) assigning of specific roles from the beginning of the teamwork. Planner -for reading the instructions, Searcher-for finding peace, Builder -for constructing the ER model. In another study, the roles had different names were changed to engineer supplier and builder, but their work was the same (3/5):  collaboration script (1/5)  SAS Strategy for successful collaboration between specific roles (the supplier and the builder) (1/5)  prompts to enhance turn-taking (2/5)  prompts to assigning roles (1/5)  staying on task (2/5)  changing roles (1/5)  Six of the selected studies (54%) describe how the activities and the ER equipment were adapted in order to be accessible to children with ND and enhance their successful inclusion. These adaptations concern:  structuring of the lessons (5/5)  systematic cycles of start-pause-end of activities considering low attention spans (3/5)  reduction of possible sources of distraction (1/5)  an easier narrative context (1/5)  adapted Bee-Bot card keys (special larger sensors, switched on/off sensors of 65 mm diameter (Jelly Bean), were inserted in the place of the original ones) (2/5)  time was progressively increased (1/5)  frequent breaks were proposed (1/5)  token economy strategies (2/5)  relational reinforcements (1/5)  Jelly Bean sensors could be temporarily put off-line, thus limiting the choices of planning and making the activities simpler (1/5)  specific goals for each lesson with an emphasis on cooperation (2/5)  bigger monitors (2/5)  tablets (2/5)  adequate space around the tables (1/5)  blended learning accessible for children with disabilities (1/5) Concerning the methodology and the results of the research studies 10/11 (90%) based their results on qualitative methods direct observations with two observers, and use of interrater validity tools, or videotaped sessions to assess collaboration, and interviews with parents and staff and six research studies additionally used pre-post ER intervention assessments methods. Only in one research study, did there was not a specification of the research methodology. Most of the articles (10/11, 90%) presents improvements in social skills, in collaboration teamwork, in social inclusion, in social interactions improvement, in communication and cooperation skills. It is documented that the sense of teamwork during the ER activities created a context of sharing the material, improved the cooperative play and collaborative learning, and fostered interactions/collaborations with other children. Concerning the research methodology, 10/11 (90%) describe in detail the efficient description of the use of the statistical method of interrater agreement when the observation method was used for data selection and the triangulation methods of reliability. Only in one of the selected articles, there is a detailed description of the educational processes and the aims of the educational intervention, but the results are described without a detailed description of the methodology. In all the research studies, the limitation of the existence of the control group was mentioned. The outcomes of our review work related to the methodology and the results of each research team are presented in Table 2.

Nanou et al., 2022
Autonomous participation in the ER activities Observation of the application of SASS / 2 observers in each child protocol / Cohens kappa

Discussion
This review provides answers to the research questions that were set at the beginning of this work. Concerning the 1st research question, we retrieved few peer-reviewed articles published in scientific journals since 2010 with a focus on collaborative methods in ER activities for children with ND. The lack of research studies in this specific domain was recognised by the first studies in the field (Wainer et al., 2010;Yuen et al., 2014). It must be underscored that 12 years later (2022), little progress had been made in the specific research domain. Although it is strongly documented that ER projects are collaborative in nature (Yuen et al., 2014) and ER has already been introduced into the classroom, from kindergarten through high school (Nanou et al., 2022) we have few scientific results about how groups of people with disabilities in special or inclusive ER settings work together, and how collaboration and collaborative working might be supported. The lack of research results in the field deprives the scientific community of evidence-based empirical data that are necessary for the enhancement of equal participation of children with disabilities in ER putting them at risk of not achieving their goals and not being able to engage in ER school or afterschool activities.
It is encouraging that almost half of the research studies that met the criteria had been conducted in inclusive settings. Particular attention should be paid to the last four research studies from 2020 to 2022 (Chaidi et al., 2021;Di Lieto et al., 2020;Fachantidis et al., 2020;Nanou et al., 2022) that were selected by our research review on collaborative ER projects are in inclusive settings and the most three in public schools. One was conducted in an afterschool inclusive setting. As the learning environment, all over the world, comes more inclusive it is hopeful that research on inclusive practices concerning ER collaborative activities has started to attract the interest of the researchers in the field (Chaidi et al., 2021;Fachantidis et al., 2020;Nanou et al., 2022;Tsiomi & Nanou, 2020).
LEGO Mindstorms, LEGO WeDo, Bee-Bot and in one study KIBO educational robotics kits were used in collaborative ER activities. These kits are potentially suitable for children with disabilities and especially for autism. One of the greatest advantages of LEGO Mindstorms and WeDo for the participation of children with ASD, is that the model structure for the assembling step by step is represented in the detailed manual that is being included in the kit. These detailed visually structured manuals describe all the facilitated play options, step by step (Lauwaert, 2008). Through the detailed manuals, the structured activities are visually organized and presented in a planned, sequential, and logical way. This kind of manual is effective in facilitating the constructing play of children with ASD (Hampshire & Hourcade, 2014). Bee-Bot is a referee significand device promoting interest and interaction with adults and peers. Children can easily control the Bee-Bot using the buttons at its back (Bargagna et al., 2019).
Concerning the 2nd research question for the adaptations of the equipment or the place, it was found only six of the selected studies (54%) described in detail the adaptations of the ER activities to be accessible to children with disabilities and enhance their successful inclusion. These adaptations include a) structuring of the lessons through b) use of token economy strategies c) through the assignment of specific goals for each lesson with an emphasis on cooperation, d) bigger monitors, c) tablets, d) systematic cycles of start-pause-end of activities considering low attention spans e) adapted Bee-Bot f) card keys, are being described adaptations by more than one researches. As for structuring referred by five of the six research studies (Albo-Canals et al., 2018;Lindsay, 2011;Lindsay et al., 2019;Lindsay & Hounsell, 2017;Nanou et al., 2022).
Concerning the 3rd research question on the specific methods that are being used to foster collaboration only five of the 11 researchers describe specific methods in order for the collaboration to be developed. three of the five research studies (Fachantidis et al., 2020;Lindsay & Lam, 2018;Nanou et al., 2022) use the method of specific role assigning but only one supported scaffolding of the process of collaboration using a specific strategy (Nanou et al., 2020). According to (Yuen et al., 2014) children with developmental disabilities without proper scaffolding little interaction can develop with peers and gain little from the collaboration. Although scaffolding, derived from the Zone of Proximal Development, (Vygotsky, 1992) has been recognized as the most effective approach and it is known that there is a need for instructional support for both team learning outcomes and individual learning outcomes to be of high quality (Kollar et al., 2006) research studies had a little focus on how collaboration could effectively be supported. Further designs of collaborative robotics projects that include students with ASD would integrate more scaffolds to encourage more intergroup communication and interaction, increase student-initiated participation, and improve collaboration.

Conclusion
This work collected peer-reviewed research articles published in scientific journals that focus on the participation of children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders in collaborative and inclusive educational robotics activities. After a systematic review, using three major digital scientific libraries, we selected eleven research articles published in scientific journals for full review. These articles satisfy most of our criteria and use qualitative methods of research with sufficient description of the research procedure, tools, and methods of data collection. In this review, the proposed methodologies in literature are categorised and presented critically. The research concerning the adaptations and the psycho-pedagogical methods that foster collaboration of children with ND in ER activities is limited till now. We highlight the need of promoting collaborative methods in the context of inclusive ER environments as the results are promising for the development of collaborative skills of children with mental, cognitive, or developmental disabilities, especially in inclusive context. Additionally, to the psychopedagogical collaborative methods, the design of educational robots with emphasis on inclusive characteristics could foster the inclusion of children with disabilities in ER and support their accessibility to 21rts century's' curriculum.