Designing a Novel Robot Activist Model for Interactive Child Rights Education

Abstract

The paper presents an original research titled, ‘SUHAKAM Going Digital with Monash’, a two years Human Right Education initiatives in Malaysia. SUHAKAM is the National Human Rights Institution established by the Malaysia Parliament and is actively finding innovative approach for Human Rights public awareness, especially child rights education in Malaysia. Monash University Malaysia is a prominent University in Malaysia that have the latest educational technologies with effective pedagogy. The synergy between SUHAKAM and Monash for child rights education innovation aimed to bring the ground breaking Robot Activist across schools in Malaysia. The research seeks to understand the educational barriers that SUHAKAM are currently facing in meeting their obligations, to assist SUHAKAM in promoting child rights agenda across Malaysia in an innovative approach. A Robot Activist is thoughtfully designed, developed and deployed to introduce what SUHAKAM is, the Child Rights Conventions (in both Malay and English) with smart Q&A; followed by an interactive game session, “Simon Says” with pupils. This paper discusses the Robot Activist design research, operation and fun interactions. The finding shows that the educational robot acts as a catalyst to formalise the international human rights education in Malaysia, with the inter-disciplinary synergies of educational sessions using humanities aspects of advanced robotics for next generation engagement. The key constraints, reflections and recommendations are critically discussed on how an educational robot, the Robot Activist can engage children with the heavy-weighted topic such as child rights conventions. Recommendations to the next phase of the model design is proposed.