Research Article
Inspiring next generation of engineers
through service-learning robotics
outreach and mentorship programme
Olusoji Ilori
1
and Andrew Watchorn
2
Abstract
This article describes the organization of a service-learning robotics outreach and mentorship programme in an engineering
department of a developing country. The programme is designed to tackle the problem of lack of integrative courses in
engineering programmes and the lack of interest in science technology engineering and mathematics subjects among primary
and secondary school students. Under the programme, a robotic team is formed consisting of undergraduate engineering
students as mentors/coaches and primary and secondary school students as team members. The team members are taught
how to design, build, and program robots to solve challenges by their mentors.The programme is intended to foster creative
problem-solving abilities of students in science technology engineering and mathematics subjects at all levels of education in the
context of a resource-constrained teaching and learning environment. The impacts of the programme are also reported.
Keywords
Robotic outreaches, mentorship, engineering education, STEM, service learning
Date received: 24 March 2016; accepted: 31 May 2016
Topic: Special Issue - Robotics in the Developing World
Associate Editor: M Bernardine Dias
Introduction
To engineer a product in a developing country is a challen-
ging task for a host of reasons. Some of the reasons include
capital scarcity, lack of trained workforce, inadequate
access to technology, politicized legal systems, underdeve-
loped supporting services, limited consumer markets and so
on. Such an environment requires engineers who are ‘prob-
lem solvers, decision makers, adept negotiators and thinkers
who are at home with open-endedness, flexibility and
resourcefulness’. It is not enough for these engineers ‘to
have acquired a store of non-transferable facts: they must
understand and internalize important concepts in subjects
such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and eco-
nomics sufficiently to make it available spontaneously,
appropriately, and in many different contexts’.
1
To develop
such engineers is critical for the technological development
of a developing country and it is the responsibility of the
educational system at all levels. Most students admitted into
engineering programmes have, to use the words of Reif,
2
‘significant misconceptions, fragmented knowledge, and
inadequate problem solving skills’ in science technology
engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects and there-
fore lack the motivation for sustainable learning required by
engineering disciplines. As a result, these students become
passive learners who only see education as acquisition of
facts and information merely to be received into the mind.
The few motivated students have no opportunities to con-
nect their knowledge with real-world applications, and
therefore their interests are not sustained. These are some
of the reasons why engineers produced are not effective
problem solvers. Of course, there are exceptions to these
descriptions. The blame is not entirely that of the student
but also that of other players in the education systems at all
levels. The education system applies a model of engineering
1
Department of Electronic/Electrical Engineering, Obafemi Awolowo
University Ile-Ife, Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria
2
National Instruments, Farminton Hills, Michigan, USA
Corresponding author:
Olusoji Ilori, Department of Electronic/Electrical Engineering, Obafemi
Awolowo University Ile-Ife, Ile-Ife, Osun State 220005, Nigeria.
Email: sojilori@yahoo.com
International Journal of Advanced
Robotic Systems
September-October 2016: 1–7
ªThe Author(s) 2016
DOI: 10.1177/1729881416663372
arx.sagepub.com
Creative Commons CC-BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
(http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without
further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/
open-access-at-sage).
education that emphasize, depersonalized and decontextua-
lized learning, uses mere recitation of concept as a means of
assessment and suppress creativity. Such a model cannot
produce the kind of engineers required to innovate in a chal-
lenging environment existing in developing countries.
3
Developing creative engineers requires large doses of diver-
gent thinking skills rather than rote learning techniques.
A robotics mentorship and outreach programme was con-
ceived with the goal of tackling some of the problems
describedabove. Robotics is selected as a platformfor achiev-
ing this goalbecause robots have a wide appeal across all age
groups, and this appeal ensures the motivation needed by
students to participate in the programme. In addition to gen-
eral creativity problem described earlier, the programme
intends to solve two other major problems simultaneously.
The first problem is lack of an integrative course at the
introductory level in engineering programmes most of
which consists of smorgasbord of specialized courses giv-
ing the students a mole vision rather than a birds eye view
of respective engineering disciplines. A situation aptly
described by Skolnik.
4
Typical EE courses cover topics related to circuits, compo-
nents, devices, and techniques that might make up an electrical
or electronic system; but seldom is the student exposed to the
system itself. It is the system application (whether radar, com-
munications, navigation, control, information processing, or
energy to which we might add robotics) that is the raison d’etre
for the electrical engineer.
Nisan and Schocken
5
and Ward and Halstead
6
in their
textbooks described similar situation in computer engineer-
ing. The outreach programme thus provides opportunity for
the engineering students to synthesize all their fragmented
learning into a holistically engineered system such as a robot.
The second problem addressed by the outreach pro-
gramme is the lack of interest in STEM subjects by younger
students because of unavailability of materials for hands-on
teaching. Under the programme, undergraduate engineer-
ing students volunteer to conduct robotic outreaches to
primary and secondary school and to encourage the stu-
dents to form robotics club. The members of the clubs are
introduced to NXT LEGO Mindstorm and are taught how
to design, build and programme robots to solve the given
challenge tasks. The activities of these outreaches provide
appropriate context for hands-on learning and teaching, and
also provides opportunities for the synthesis of both tech-
nical ‘hard’ and people ‘soft’ skills, since the students are
required to communicate and demonstrate technical con-
cepts within the dynamics of a team in a real-life and
authentic performance situation.
7
The idea of using university engineering students as
mentors and coaches of robotics club is not new. Karp
et al.
8,9
reported similar approaches in engaging elementary
school students to high school students in engineering and
also enriching the educational experience of engineering
undergraduate thereby improving the retention rates of
electrical and computer engineering students. One merit
of this approach in a resource constrained environment is
that undergraduate engineering students, who are more tech
savvy and more enthusiastic about robots, are better suited
as coaches of robotic clubs compared to primary and sec-
ondary school teachers.
10
In addition, the generation gap
between the university students and primary and secondary
school students is smaller, consequently both the groups
connect easily in a learning situation.
The authors are not claiming that robotic outreaches are
a panacea for all the ills besetting engineering education in
developing countries. But the judicious use of a service-
learning program, based either on robotics or not, is a step
in the right direction. Such a programme leverages the
advantages service learning as a method of teaching con-
tents, a way for student to connect their knowledge with
‘real-world’ applications and a means to engender interest
in and knowledge of STEM fields at the lower education
level. All of these benefits are absent in the present educa-
tion system. The ultimate aim of these efforts is to influ-
ence the interest of young students in STEM subjects at an
early age.
11
An idea popularly referred to in Nigeria by the
phrase ‘catch them young’.
Organization and activities of the
programme
The robotic outreach programme is a spin-off from the
iLab-Africa project. iLab is a remote laboratory technology
that allows remote access to and control of expensive
equipment to perform pedagogic scientific and engineering
experiments via the Internet.
12
The technology was devel-
oped in Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In
Africa, three Universities, Obafemi Awolowo University
(OAU), Ile-Ife Nigeria; Makerere University in Uganda
and University of Dar es Salam in Tanzania, collaborated
with MIT in the iLab-Africa project funded by Carnegie
Corporation. The collaboration involves the design, devel-
opment and deployment of these remote labs for use in
credit awarding science and engineering courses. On OAU
campus, the iLab project attracted tech-savvy students
whose interest went beyond the classroom. It is from this
group of students that the core team of coaches and mentors
for the outreach was formed and hence the official name
iLabRoC meaning iLab Robotics Club.
The mentorship and outreach programme consists of
undergraduate students of departments of electronic/elec-
trical engineering, computer science and engineering,
mechanical engineering, physics and microbiology of Oba-
femi Awolowo University. Admission to the group is based
on the interest of the students. There is no formal admission
process, only the interest and curiosity of the students
count. Membership class varies from freshmen to seniors.
The outreach programme uses various robotic platforms
such as Lego mindstorm NXT, EV3 and TETRIX as a
2International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems
platform for teaching the design of robots to solve various
tasks. New student members are trained in the basics of
putting the kits together and programming it to perform basic
tasks. During the training, concepts taught in the classroom
that are applicable to robot design are pointed out and
emphasized. Concepts from software engineering, signals
and systems, circuits and probability are emphasized and
their applications are demonstrated. The LEGO platform has
been used by various researchers to teach and reinforce con-
cepts such as real-time control,
13
control systems labora-
tory,
14
discrete-time control systems,
15
Kalman filter,
16
fuzzy control,
17
rotational energy in physics,
18
programme
structures in software engineering,
19
engineering design,
20
C
programming
21
and MATLAB programming.
22
Showing
students all these pedagogic applications of LEGO kits helps
to convince them that LEGO kit is not a mere toy. The
process of actually solving a problem using theoretical con-
cepts helps students to organize their thoughts for effective
application of theory to other problems. New members are
also taught good mentorship skills such as how to teach basic
robot design and construction skills, nudge students in the
right direction, give students opportunity to learn from mis-
takes, help solve design and construction problem, maintain
proper team dynamics,
23
encourage and not stifle creativity
and most important of all to place emphasis on the educa-
tional experience rather than winning any competition at the
expense of the learning process.
24
New members also have
the opportunity to participate in National Instrument (NI)
LabVIEW Associate Developer (CLAD) certification
training organized by a certified instructor from NI.
LabVIEW is an important system programming language
that allows the development and deployment of control and
instrumentation-based systems such as robots. Some mem-
bers are now CLAD certified as a result of these training.
This training goes a long way to assist members in under-
standing the inner workings of the robots.
Students conduct robotic outreaches during the seme-
ster and vacation period. Outreaches are conducted in
primary and secondary schools and other tertiary institu-
tions. The outreach activities involve teaching robot
design, organizing the robotic teams, coaching and men-
toring the robotics team for competitions at the local,
national and international level. These activities are car-
ried out on volunteer basis. During the training, relevant
concepts from STEM subjects are emphasized and
demonstrated by using them to solve problems encoun-
tered in the robotic design activities. As a results these
concepts are brought to life in the mind of the students.
In the early stage of the programme, the group collabo-
rated with the African Regional Centre for Space Science
and Technology Education in English which is a United
Nations affiliated agency responsible for the promotion
of space science and technology education in English-
speaking African countries and is located on OAU campus.
The outreach programme was called the Robotics Educa-
tion Program (REP) under this collaboration. REP has two
broad objectives: to inspire creativity in learning STEM
subjects among secondary school students and, to foster
mentorship skills, volunteerism, and team-based problem-
solving skills among tertiary school students. ARCSSTEE
has over 600 Space Clubs in primary and secondary schools
all over the country and it sponsored most of the outreaches
to schools where its space clubs were already established.
Competitions were also organized for schools that were
trained under the programme.
The pilot phase of the REP started in March 2011 with
some iLabRoC students serving as mentors and coaches.
Thirty students from the three selected secondary schools
received 6-week training on how to build and programme
robots using LEGO Mindstorm robotic kits. One student
from a home school also participated in the programme.
Each team was given a robotic kit donated by NIs. Each
team practiced for atleast 2 hrs each week for a total of 6
weeks. During the training, the students learn to conceive,
design, assemble, program, and test their robots. After the 6
weeks training, the teams were given 2 weeks to prepare for
the competition and come up with designs in line with the
theme of the competition ‘Applications of Robots in Soci-
ety’. Assessment of the pilot phase of REP by the partici-
pants indicated realization of the objectives of the program.
Three of the REP teams also participated in a National
LEGO Mindstorm competition where two teams won and
went on to represent the country at the 2011 World Robotic
Olympiad that took place in Abu Dhabi, United Arab
Emirate.
The iLabRoC team has participated twice in the World
Robotic Olympiad (WRO) in 2013 and 2015. In 2013, the
group participated in the GEN II football category of
the WRO, which took place in Jakarta Indonesia. In
2015, the group participated in the University category of
the WRO, which took place in Doha, Qatar. Although on
both occasion the team did not win, it was an experience
that really affected the technical outlook of the members
and was a boost to their self-esteem and morale.
Impacts of the programme
The impact of the programme is assessed by personal expe-
rience of and testimonials of students and other
participants.
According to testimonial from students participating in
the programme, the programme has enriched their educa-
tional experience by equipping them with the systems view
of engineering. As the saying goes ‘‘the best way to learn
something is to teach it’’. Giving the students the opportu-
nity to teach robotics in a real-world context is a very
strong motivating force for learning and applying both the
technical concepts and other soft skills. For example in
crafting lesson plans for teaching the robotics teams, the
group adapted the understanding by design templates
developed by Wiggins and Mctighe.
25
This has helped the
mentors themselves adopt such an approach to reframing
Ilori and Watchorn 3
and designing intended learning outcomes by themselves
for the courses in their engineering programme. A lot of
these courses do not have well-defined and articulated
intended learning outcome to guide student’ learning.
By teaching robotics, the mentors have been encour-
aged to take proactive stanceintheirowneducationand
also to take responsibility for the application of acquired
knowledge. Majority of engineering students in develop-
ing countries resign themselves to the view that the edu-
cation they received only allows them to be mere
technicians with only the ability to install, maintain and
operate systems designed and built outside the country.
They see themselves as mere technicians with no oppor-
tunity to get involved in the design and manufacturing
aspect of their discipline. A lot of students on the iLabRoC
team have started to think otherwise. They have started to
design products.
The outreach programme has helped the participating
coaches to hone their entrepreneurial skills, for example,
fund raising. As part of their activities, the coaches engage
in fundraising activities for the purpose of sponsoring the
participation of their robotic teams in national competitions.
This opportunity gave the mentors practical experience in
art of pitching for projects they believe in. Some of entre-
preneurial projects embarked on by the mentors are the
Humane project;
26
Raspberry Pi-based web access close
circuit camera and Wi-Fi student class attendance systems.
As an interesting sidelight, one of the iLabRoC team leader
is organizing an annual anime convention tagged Aniwee
which brings together geeks and anime fans and it’s the first
of its kind in the country. Presently, the room allocated for
the activity of the group has turned into a kind of geek haven,
where students are engaged in technical activities of all
kinds and it is opened 24/7 to the students.
27
One of the
students who took part in the programme was able to lever-
age her outreach experience during a job interview for a
position in a multinational company.
One area in which the outreach is having positive impact
is in the National Service year of alumni of the iLabRoc
team. In Nigeria, University graduates are mandated by law
to participate in the National Youth Service Corps pro-
gramme for a year. The graduates are deployed to towns
different from their place of origin and are expected to live
with people and learn the culture of the ethnic groups in
these towns. A large percentage of these towns are remote
from major cities where some of the graduates grew up.
The aim of the programme is to unite the country by
encouraging educated youths to appreciate other ethnic
groups and at the same time to encourage them to use their
newly acquired skills to serve these towns. In most cases,
these educated youths are not motivated and are underuti-
lized in the place where they are deployed. Some iLabRoC
alumni have started introducing robotics to schools in these
remote regions.
Participating in competitions such as WRO has helped
to demystify the complexity of technology and build self-
confidence of the mentors in actual design. Seeing others
using the same concepts they were taught in the classroom
was a boost to their self-esteem in a way contagious among
their peers. This is a very important part of the educational
experience of the mentors. Figures 1 and 2 show the bowl-
ing robot built for the 2016 WRO bowling challenge.
Figure 1. The bowling robot for WRO competition. WRO: World Robotic Olympiad.
4International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems
Future directions of the programme
It is generally believed that robots will become a fast sell-
ing technological product of the future.
28
The iLabRoC
group is positioning itself to exploit this trend by develop-
ing the capacity to contribute to that future. The ultimate
goal of the group is to transform itself into a hotbed of
robotic system research by designing and building robots
within the context of a developing economy. A recurring
problem encountered by the group in its outreach is the
inability of many schools to afford robotic kits to keep the
interest alive after the outreach. Presently, the team is con-
ducting research into design of low-cost robotic kits. The
group has also identified some kits and is trying to adopt
them in its outreaches.
29
One of the future goals of the iLabRoC team is to form,
coach and mentor teams qualified to participate in the
FIRST Lego league competition. The team sees this as an
opportunity to up the ante of its activities.
The Department of Electronic/Electrical Engineering is
currently designing an introductory, integrative and hands-
on course that uses robotic kits as a platform along the line
of course 6.01SC ‘Introduction to Electrical Engineering
and Computer Science in MIT’.
30
The objective of the
course is to give freshmen engineering students an over-
view of electronic and electrical systems engineering
design concepts and to enhance their general problem-
solving skills.
One area that the iLabRoC group is seeking collabora-
tion is in the area of social robots. The area of social robots
has not been fully exploited in all our activities because this
requires bringing in other domain experts to assist in plan-
ning and supervising these activities. Humanoid robots
have been employed in English language teaching,
31
paediatric cancer interventions
32
and games for autistic
children
33
with impressive results that suggest adoption and
adaptation to our kind of activities. Humanoid robots open
a whole new programming challenge for the students and
more real-world applications specifically in the health sec-
tor of the economy.
There is a need to develop and carry out a comprehen-
sive and quantitative study to assess the impact of the pro-
gramme on the academic and professional life of the
mentors and the academic performance of the prot´eg´es.
One reason this study has not been carried out is that the
soft skills fostered by a service-learning programme such as
this are difficult to assess in the classroom, though Maloney
et al.
34
have developed a new method which can be helpful
in carrying out such assessment.
Conclusions
A service-learning robotic outreach and mentorship pro-
gramme has been designed and implemented by the
authors. The programme is designed to improve the sys-
tems applications view of engineering students, to increase
the interest of students in STEM subjects at all levels and to
improve the problem-solving abilities of the participating
students. The structure of the programme consists of under-
graduate engineering students serving as mentors and coa-
ches to robotics team consisting of primary and secondary
school students. The programme is having positive impacts
on the educational experience of undergraduate engineer-
ing students who are members of the robotic teams. It is
also having impact on the curriculum development and
delivery of the Department. Till date, over 30 primary and
secondary schools in all have participated in the pro-
gramme all over the country.
Figure 2. Block diagram of the bowling robot.
Ilori and Watchorn 5
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support
for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The
author (IOO) gratefully acknowledges the financial supports from
the National Instrument of Austin, Texas, USA, and Google
Nigeria. National Instruments also donated the kits, software and
other accessories used for the outreaches.
References
1. Caine RN and Caine G. Making connections: teaching and
the human brain. Boston: Addison-Wesley, 1991.
2. Reif F. Applying cognitive science to education: thinking and
learning in scientific and other complex domains.Cam-
bridge: MIT Press, 2008.
3. Akinwande I. Higher education and knowledge creation
infrastructure – how OAU can ‘invent’ the future. Nigeria:
Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife, 2009.
4. Skolnik MI. Introduction to Radar Systems, 2 edition. Tokyo
Japan: McGraw-Hill Education, 1980.
5. Nisan N and Schocken S. The elements of computing systems:
building a modern computer from first principles.Cam-
bridge: MIT Press, 2005.
6. Ward SA and Halstead RH. Computation structures. Cam-
bridge: MIT Press, 1990.
7. Panadero CF, Roma´ JV and Kloos CD. Impact of learning
experiences using LEGO Mindstorms
®
in engineering
courses. In: 2010 IEEE education engineering (EDUCON),
2010, pp. 503–512.
8. Karp T, Gale R, Lowe LA, et al. Generation NXT: building
young engineers with LEGOs. IEEE Trans Educ 2010; 53(1):
80–87.
9. Karp T, Gale R, Tan M, et al. Hosting a pipeline of K-12
robotics competitions at a college of engineering – a review
of benefits and challenges. Int J Serv Learn Eng Humanit Eng
Soc Entrep Fall 2014: 406–423.
10. Howell WL, McCaffrey EJ and Murphy RR. University men-
toring for first Lego league. In: 33rd annual frontiers in edu-
cation, 2003 (FIE’03), 2003, Vol. 2, pp. F3A-11–F3A-16.
11. Oppliger D.Using first Lego league to enhance engineering
education and to increase the pool of future engineering stu-
dents (work in progress). In: 32nd annual frontiers in educa-
tion, 2002 (FIE’02), 2002, Vol. 3, pp. S4D-11–S4D-15.
12. Harward VJ, del Alamo JA, Lerman SR, et al. The iLab
shared architecture: a web services infrastructure to build
communities of Internet accessible laboratories. Proc IEEE
2008; 96(6): 931–950.
13. Ganzha M, Paprzycki M and Pełech-Pilichowski T. Real-time
control teaching using LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Robot.
In: Proceedings of the international multiconference on com-
puter science and information technology, 2008, pp.
625–628.
14. Wadoo SA and Jain R. A LEGO based undergraduate control
systems laboratory. In: 2012 IEEE Long Island, systems, appli-
cations and technology conference (LISAT), 2012, pp. 1–6.
15. Sanchez A and Bucio J. Improving the teaching of discrete-
event control systems using a LEGO manufacturing proto-
type. IEEE Trans Educ 2012; 55(3): 326–331.
16. Pinto M, Moreira AP and Matos A. Localization of mobile
robots using an extended Kalman filter in a LEGO NXT.
IEEE Trans Educ 2012; 55(1): 135–144.
17. Chen H-J and Kao Y-H. Design of fuzzy control applied to
the path following of Lego-NXT system. In: 2012 interna-
tional conference on fuzzy theory and it’s applications
(iFUZZY), 2012, pp. 263–267.
18. Jing Q, Yang L, Jiang M, et al. A case study on LEGO activity
in physics class: taking the ‘‘Rotational Kinetic Energy’’ for
example. In: 2015 IEEE 15th International Conference on
Advanced Learning Technologies, 2015, pp. 293–295.
19. Lew MW, Horton TB and Sherriff MS. Using LEGO MIND-
STORMS NXT and LEJOS in an advanced software engi-
neering course. In: 2010 23rd IEEE conference on software
engineering education and training, 2010, pp. 121–128.
20. Min S-K, Seo S-H, Kim J-H, et al. A creative engineering
design course for freshman using LEGO robots. In: IEEE
international symposium on industrial electronics, 2009
(ISIE’09), 2009, pp. 960–965.
21. Rodriguez Perez S, Gold-Veerkamp C, Abke J, et al. A new didac-
tic method for programming in C for freshmen students using
LEGO mindstorms EV3. In: 2015 international conference o n
interactive collaborative learning (ICL), 2015, pp. 911–914.
22. Behrens A, Atorf L, Schwann R, et al. MATLAB meets
LEGO mindstorm – a freshman introduction course into prac-
tical engineering. IEEE Trans Educ 2010; 53(2): 306–317.
23. Huang KH and Huang P-L. Lego robotics and group learning:
exploring the effects of gender, age, and family background.
In: 2011 IEEE 3rd international conference on communica-
tion software and networks (ICCSN), 2011, pp. 219–222.
24. Donovan S, Hecht A and Woodward J. Developing a robotics
outreach program. Worcester: Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
B.Sc. Interactive Qualifying Project Report, March 3, 2005.
25. Wiggins GP and McTighe J. Understanding by design. Alex-
andria: ASCD, 2005.
26. Dahunsi O and These OAU engineering students built
‘humane’, to make smartphones accessible to the blind.
[Online]. https://techpoint.ng/2015/07/21/oau-engineering-
students-build-humane-to-make-smartphones-accessible-to-
the-blind/ (2015, accessed 11 February 2016).
27. Dahunsi O and How iLabs OAU is helping advance Techno-
culture in Nigeria. [Online]. https://techpoint.ng/2015/08/27/
how-ilabs-oau-is-helping-advance-the-technoculture-in-
nigeria/ (2015, accessed 12 February 2016).
28. Titlow JP and Bill Gates on Microsoft’s 40th anniversary: the
future is all robots and holograms | fast company | business þ
innovation. [Online]. http://www.fastcompany.com/3
044687/fast-feed/bill-gates-on-microsofts-40th-anniversary-
the-future-is-all-robots-and-holograms. (2015, accessed 27
April 2016)
6International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems
29. African Robotics Network (AFRON). http://robotics-africa.org/
(accessed 15 February 2016).
30. Leslie K, Jacob W, Harold A, et al. 6.01SC introduction to
electrical engineering and computer science I, Spring 2011.
MIT OpenCourseWare. [Online]. http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/
electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-01sc-intro
duction-to-electrical-engineering-and-computer-science-i-
spring-2011/ (accessed 11 February 2016).
31. Alemi M, Meghdari A and Ghazisaedy M. The impact of
social robotics on L2 learners’ anxiety and attitude in English
vocabulary acquisition. Int J Soc Robot 2015; 7(4): 523–535.
32. Alemi M, Ghanbarzadeh A, Meghdari A, et al. Clinical appli-
cation of a humanoid robot in pediatric cancer interventions.
Int J Soc Robot 2015; 7.
33. Taheri AR, Alemi M, Meghdari A, et al. Clinical application
of humanoid robots in playing imitation games for autistic
children in Iran. Procedia Soc Behav Sci 2015; 176:
898–906.
34. Maloney P, Dent L and Karp T. A new method of assessing
the effects of a service-learning class on engineering under-
graduate students. Int J Serv Learn Eng Humanit Eng Soc
Entrep Fall 2014: 29–47.
Ilori and Watchorn 7
