In peer tutoring, the learner is taught by a colleague rather than by a traditional tutor. This strategy has been shown to be effective in human tutoring, where students have higher learning gains when taught by a peer instead of a traditional tutor. Similar results have been shown in child-robot interactions studies, where a peer robot was more effective than a tutor robot at teaching children. In this work, we compare skill increase and perception of a peer robot to a tutor robot when teaching adults. We designed a system in which a robot provides personalized help to adults in electronic circuit construction. We compare the number of learned skills and preferences of a peer robot to a tutor robot. Participants in both conditions improved their circuit skills after interacting with the robot. There were no significant differences in number of skills learned between conditions. However, participants with low prior domain knowledge learned significantly more with a peer robot than a tutor robot. Furthermore, the peer robot was perceived as friendlier, more social, smarter, and more respectful than the tutor robot, regardless of initial skill level.
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Dyadic Stance in Natural Language Communication with a Teachable Robot
Learning companion robots can provide personalized learning interactions to engage students in many domains including STEM. For successful interactions, students must feel comfortable and engaged. We describe an experiment with a learning companion robot acting as a teachable robot; based on human-to-human peer tutoring, students teach the robot how to solve math problems. We compare student attitudes of comfort, attention, engagement, motivation, and physical proximity for two dyadic stance formations: a face-to-face stance and a side-by-side stance. In human-robot interaction experiments, it is common for dyads to assume a face-to-face stance, while in human-to-human peer tutoring, it is common for dyads to sit in side-by-side as well as face-to-face formations. We find that students in the face-to-face stance report stronger feelings of comfort and attention, compared to students in the side-by-side stance. We find no difference between stances for feelings of engagement, motivation, and physical proximity.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1637947
- PAR ID:
- 10076256
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- HRI '18 Companion of the 2018 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 85 - 86
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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