Is Augmented Reality Robot as Effective as Physical Robot in Motivating Students to Learn Programming?

This work investigates the confidence and the intrinsic motivation of novice programmers in using augmented reality robots to learn programming as compared to using physical robots. We found no significant differences in students' confidence and their intrinsic motivation levels. Our sentiment analysis of students' comments, on the other hand, showed that the augmented reality robot provides less negative experience with respect to the technology itself during their learning. This suggests that an augmented reality robot can be used as an alternative of a physical robot to motivate students in learning programming. Even with this finding, we found that the physical robot continues to attract students. The full analysis of our findings is described in this work.