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We aim to design robotic educational support systems that can promote socially and intellectually meaningful learning experiences for students while they complete school work outside of class. To pursue this goal, we conducted participatory design studies with 10 children (aged 10–12) to explore their design needs for robot assisted homework. We investigated children’s current ways of doing homework, the type of support they receive while doing homework, and co-designed the speech and expressiveness of a homework companion robot. Children and parents attending our design sessions explained that an emotionally expressive social robot as a homework aid can support students’ motivation and engagement, as well as their affective state. Children primarily perceived the robot as a dedicated assistant at home, capable of forming meaningful friendships, or a shared classroom learning resource. We present key design recommendations to support students’ homework experiences with a learning companion robot.
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This content will become publicly available on June 15, 2027
Exploring Student Perspectives on Interacting with Social Robots for Homework
Educational robots are increasingly adopted to support children's learning through interactive and personalized learning. Social interaction remains a crucial mechanism for effective learning, yet teacher and parental involvement in out-of-class learning activities is minimal or limited to supervisory roles. To support students with socially and intellectually meaningful learning experiences and to augment teachers' pedagogical strategies outside of a classroom environment, we aim to explore the design of \textit{a learning companion robot} by building a better understanding of the use cases for robot-assisted homework. In this paper, we report on findings from in-home technology probe studies with 10 students (aged 10--12), which revealed student expectations surrounding \textit{what} support needs to be delivered by the robot and \textit{how} it should be delivered. We discuss the themes of our findings and their implications for future design of social robots for homework assistance.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2202802
- PAR ID:
- 10675792
- Publisher / Repository:
- ACM
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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