The National Science Foundation (NSF) conducted a research that studied the preferences of university students and instructors in various class formats. The instructors preferred handling physical classes while the 18 students involved in the research were split between remote learning and attending classes in person, NSF said Wednesday.
Amid their preferences, the instructors noted that most classes prefer the usage of telepresence robots as distance learning tools. The students added the robots have the capacity to make them expressive and self-aware in classes.
"Research experience for undergraduates has become a big challenge during the ongoing pandemic, and telepresence robots can help not only in education but also in possibilities for undergraduates to hone their research skills through remote participation," said Prabhakaran Balakrishnan, program director at NSF's Division of Information and Intelligent Systems.
A separate study by Oregon State University suggested that telepresence robots allow students to be more engaged with their classes.
