Recently, the interest in the educational robotics has grown greatly, but few studies have been conducted in this field. This study intended to investigate the trend of usage robotics in education during the period of 2001-2014 while analyzing 133 research papers to find the answers to the following questions. First, what is the general research trend of utilizing robotics in education? Second, what are the most recent issues and challenges of robotics in education?
Publications have been analyzed using quantitative analysis and cross-tabulation. All gathered articles have been categorized and analyzed under twelve categories. Furthermore, seven categories have been cross-tabulated with other categories.
Overall findings present that there are a significant amount of publications on higher and secondary education. Articles on early education and teachers training have started to become more apparent lately. It has also been noticed that robotics generally is seen as an extracurricular activity. Among educational robots, ‘robot kit’ type was one of the highly utilized, especially LEGO Mindstorms robot kit. The main objective of most analyzed articles is the experience of a course curriculum.
Results of the study show that there are three main issues and challenges of robotics in education. First, there is a lack of quantitative research on the impact of robotics in education. Second is an absence of well-defined curriculum for target audience. Third is the narrow use of robotics in education. The study also present recommendations for future research.