RIDEX

The RIDEX (Extended Robotics Solutions for the Inclusive Development of Atypical and Typical Children) project is a continuation and expansion of the RIDE (Robotics for the Inclusive Development of Atypical and Typical Children) project (https://www.riderobotics.eu/). Both projects are managed by the Abacusan Studio Oktatásszervező Nonprofit Kft, and sponsored by the Erasmus+ program.

The members of the consortium for the RIDEX project are the Abacusan Studio, the Giving Hungary Foundation, the ELTE Faculty of Pedagogy and Psychology and 5 schools (2 from Turkey, 1 from Austria, 1 from Romania and 1 from Hungary). This is a strategic partnership in the field of school education which has multiple goals, but the main focus is on the usage of storification and educational robotics in order to improve the inclusion in education (not only for children with learning difficulties but with communication or behavioral problems as well, for children with special educational needs, in order to reduce the children’s struggle and failure  in education), and the development of 21st century skills.

It is a 3 year long project (from February 2022 to February 2025). The expansions compared to the previous RIDE project are the elaboration of new stories, the expansion of developmental fields and the widening of the available languages of the teaching materials.

The ELTE PPK research team (Enikő Orsolya Bereczki, Anikó Fehérvári and Borbála Bacsa-Károlyi) is mainly responsible for the evaluation of the project and the synthesis and publication of the research. The ELTE team is measuring the effects of educational robotics on learning for 5th and 6th grade students with different needs, focusing on their development in 4 critical 21st century fields (algorithmic thinking, creativity, social and emotional learning and also their attitude toward robotics and science).

From each participating school 2 classes are involved in this project, one experimental and one control group. The experimental group has a robotics intervention held by the teachers throughout one school year, whilst the control group doesn’t take part in any special intervention. The effectiveness of the intervention will be measured by comparing the performance of the two groups on the pretests (in the beginning of the school year) and on the posttests (at the end of the school year). The intervention will be repeated for one more time during the second year of the project with different participants.