Learning robotics can be performed individually or as a collaborative problem-solving activity. Effective pedagogy is based on the latter. In this paper, we offer a work-in-progress report of an observational analysis of parent-child dyads engaged in an educational robotics workshop in a Science Center. We chose this context because learning technological fluency is largely sustained by family-based interactions. We aim to observe what is the relationship between the occurrence of joint engagement in parent-child dyads and their effectiveness in beta-testing of an interactive robot. We use the concept of a shared cooperative activity (Bratman, 1992) as a framework for this analysis and argue for the importance of conducting such analyses in an ecologically valid learning environment.