  Online learning has soared in popularity in the educational landscape of
COVID-19 and carries the benefits of increased flexibility and access to
far-away training resources. However, it also restricts communication between
peers and teachers, limits physical interactions and confines learning to the
computer screen and keyboard. In this project, we designed a novel way to
engage students in collaborative online learning by using haptic-enabled
tangible robots, Cellulo. We built a library which connects two robots remotely
for a learning activity based around the structure of a biological cell. To
discover how separate modes of haptic feedback might differentially affect
collaboration, two modes of haptic force-feedback were implemented (haptic
co-location and haptic consensus). With a case study, we found that the haptic
co-location mode seemed to stimulate collectivist behaviour to a greater extent
than the haptic consensus mode, which was associated with individualism and
less interaction. While the haptic co-location mode seemed to encourage
information pooling, participants using the haptic consensus mode tended to
focus more on technical co-ordination. This work introduces a novel system that
can provide interesting insights on how to integrate haptic feedback into
collaborative remote learning activities in future.
