Social robots for education: A review <s> Benefits of social robots as tutoring agents <s> Previous research has indicated that nonverbal teacher behaviors such as smiling, vocal expressiveness, movement about the classroom, and relaxed body position are salient low‐inference variables of a process which results in a product of increased cognitive and affective learning. This study identified a set of verbal teacher immediacy behaviors which similarly relate to increased student learning. Results indicated differentiated use of various types of verbal immediacy messages between small and larger classes, and that the impact of teacher immediacy behaviors (both verbal and nonverbal) on learning is coincidentally enhanced as class size increases. The study provides empirical definition of a specific set of low‐inference verbal variables which, in combination with previously identified nonverbal variables, clarify a single process‐product model for effective instructional interaction. <s> BIB001 </s> Social robots for education: A review <s> Benefits of social robots as tutoring agents <s> This meta‐analysis reviews the findings of 81 studies (N=24,474) examining the relationship between teachers' verbal or nonverbal immediacy (or both) and students' learning outcomes. The cumulative evidence indicates meaningful correlations between teachers' nonverbal immediacy and student reports of perceived learning (r=.51) and affective learning (r=.49), but only a slight correlation with students' performance on cognitive learning measures (r=.17). Teachers' verbal immediacy was found to correlate with students' perceived learning (r=.49) and affective learning (r=.49), but again the relationship with performed cognitive learning was notably smaller (r=.06). Average effect sizes were generally smaller in experimental research designs than in survey‐type research, and generally larger when verbal/nonverbal immediacy was measured as a single construct. The cumulative results of this meta‐analysis confirm that teacher immediacy has a substantial relationship with certain attitudes and perceptions of stu... <s> BIB002 </s> Social robots for education: A review <s> Benefits of social robots as tutoring agents <s> Social robots are robots that help people as capable partners rather than as tools, are believed to be of greatest use for applications in entertainment, education, and healthcare because of their potential to be perceived as trusting, helpful, reliable, and engaging. This paper explores how the robot's physical presence influences a person's perception of these characteristics. The first study reported here demonstrates the differences between a robot and an animated character in terms a person's engagement and perceptions of the robot and character. The second study shows that this difference is a result of the physical presence of the robot and that a person's reactions would be similar even if the robot is not physically collocated. Implications to the design of socially communicative and interactive robots are discussed. <s> BIB003 </s> Social robots for education: A review <s> Benefits of social robots as tutoring agents <s> HRI researchers interested in social robots have made large investments in humanoid robots. There is still sparse evidence that peoples' responses to robots differ from their responses to computer agents, suggesting that agent studies might serve to test HRI hypotheses. To help us understand the difference between people's social interactions with an agent and a robot, we experimentally compared people's responses in a health interview with (a) a computer agent projected either on a computer monitor or life-size on a screen, (b) a remote robot projected life-size on a screen, or (c) a collocated robot in the same room. We found a few behavioral and large attitude differences across these conditions. Participants forgot more and disclosed least with the collocated robot, next with the projected remote robot, and then with the agent. They spent more time with the collocated robot and their attitudes were most positive toward that robot. We discuss tradeoffs for HRI research of using collocated robots, remote robots, and computer agents as proxies of robots. <s> BIB004 </s> Social robots for education: A review <s> Benefits of social robots as tutoring agents <s> We present a rationale for studying long-term human-robot interaction and explain why new applications are necessary for this type of experimentation. The design and implementation of a robot that has been implemented is briefly described with the outline of a study that is under way. <s> BIB005 </s> Social robots for education: A review <s> Benefits of social robots as tutoring agents <s> Teaching is inherently a social interaction between teacher and student. Despite this knowledge, many educational tools, such as vocabulary training programs, still model the interaction in a tutoring scenario as unidirectional knowledge transfer rather than a social dialog. Therefore, ongoing research aims to develop virtual agents as more appropriate media in education. Virtual agents can induce the perception of a life-like social interaction partner that communicates through natural modalities such as speech, gestures and emotional expressions. This effect can be additionally enhanced with a physical robotic embodiment. This paper presents the development of social supportive behaviors for a robotic tutor to be used in a language learning application. The effect of these behaviors on the learning performance of students was evaluated. The results support that employing social supportive behavior increases learning efficiency of students. <s> BIB006 </s> Social robots for education: A review <s> Benefits of social robots as tutoring agents <s> This paper explores how a robot’s physical presence affects human judgments of the robot as a social partner. For this experiment, participants collaborated on simple book-moving tasks with a humanoid robot that was either physically present or displayed via a live video feed. Multiple tasks individually examined the following aspects of social interaction: greetings, cooperation, trust, and personal space. Participants readily greeted and cooperated with the robot whether present physically or in live video display. However, participants were more likely both to fulfill an unusual request and to afford greater personal space to the robot when it was physically present, than when it was shown on live video. The same was true when the live video displayed robot’s gestures were augmented with disambiguating 3-D information. Questionnaire data support these behavioral findings and also show that participants had an overall more positive interaction with the physically present robot. <s> BIB007 </s> Social robots for education: A review <s> Benefits of social robots as tutoring agents <s> Television has become a nearly ubiquitous feature in children’s cultural landscape. A review of the research into young children’s learning from television indicates that the likelihood that children will learn from screen media is influenced by their developing social relationships with on-screen characters, as much as by their developing perception of the screen and their symbolic understanding and comprehension of information presented on screen. Considering the circumstances in which children under 6 years learn from screen media can inform teachers, parents, and researchers about the important nature of social interaction in early learning and development. The findings reviewed in this article suggest the social nature of learning, even learning from screen media. <s> BIB008 </s> Social robots for education: A review <s> Benefits of social robots as tutoring agents <s> The Physical Presence of a Robot Tutor Increases Cognitive Learning Gains Daniel Leyzberg (daniel.leyzberg@yale.edu) Samuel Spaulding (samuel.spaulding@yale.edu) Mariya Toneva (mariya.toneva@yale.edu) Brian Scassellati (scaz@cs.yale.edu) Department of Computer Science, Yale University 51 Prospect St., New Haven, CT 06511, USA Abstract We present the results of a 100 participant study on the role of a robot’s physical presence in a robot tutoring task. Partic- ipants were asked to solve a set of puzzles while being pro- vided occasional gameplay advice by a robot tutor. Each par- ticipant was assigned one of five conditions: (1) no advice, (2) robot providing randomized advice, (3) voice of the robot providing personalized advice, (4) video representation of the robot providing personalized advice, or (5) physically-present robot providing personalized advice. We assess the tutor’s ef- fectiveness by the time it takes participants to complete the puzzles. Participants in the robot providing personalized ad- vice group solved most puzzles faster on average and improved their same-puzzle solving time significantly more than partic- ipants in any other group. Our study is the first to assess the effect of the physical presence of a robot in an automated tu- toring interaction. We conclude that physical embodiment can produce measurable learning gains. Keywords: Robotics; Computer Science; Tutoring Introduction What kinds of human-robot interactions benefit from the physical embodiment of a robot? For human-robot interac- tions that require manipulating the physical world, a physical robot is a necessity, but for those interactions where physi- cal embodiment is optional, when is an embodied robot more useful than an on-screen agent? In this study, we explore the differences in task perfor- mance of participants engaged in a cognitive learning task in which a robot acts as a tutor. Participants were asked to play a puzzle game while receiving strategy advice from either: a physically-present robot, a video of the same robot, its disem- bodied voice, a robot giving randomized advice, or no agent at all. We use the resulting data to draw conclusions about the effect of embodiment in robot tutoring tasks. Previous work has investigated the social influence of a robot’s embodiment. Does a robot engender more trust, more compliance, more engagement, or more motivation by its physical presence, more so than an on-screen agent or a video representation of a robot would? Such questions have been explored via two methodologies: self-report mea- sures and task-performance measures. Using self-report mea- sures, Kidd and Breazeal (2004) found that a physically- present robot was perceived as more enjoyable, more cred- ible, and more informative than an on-screen character in a block-moving task. In Wainer, Feil-Seifer, Shell, and Mataric (2007), an embodied robot was rated as more attentive and more helpful than both a video representation of the robot and a simulated on-screen robot-like character. Tapus, Tapus, and Mataric (2009) found that individuals suffering from cog- nitive impairment and/or Alzheimer’s disease reported being more engaged with a robot treatment than a similar on-screen agent treatment. Kiesler, Powers, Fussell, and Torrey (2008) used task- performance measures to find that participants who received health advice from a physically-present robot were more likely to choose a healthy snack than participants who re- ceived the same information in robot-video or on-screen agent conditions. In Bainbridge, Hart, Kim, and Scassellati (2008), a physically-present robot yielded significantly more compliance to its commands than a video representation of the same robot. No previous work has investigated whether learning out- comes are affected by a robot’s physical presence. The closest related work is in Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS´s), which are educational computer programs that produce individual- ized lessons, advice, and questions usually in a workbook- style or quiz-style environment (Nkambou, Bourdeau, & Psych´e, 2010). A parallel notion of embodiment called “the persona effect” exists in ITS research. (See Dehn and Van Mulken (2000) for an overview.) The persona effect is the impact, if any, that an on-screen character has on students using an ITS. The majority of research on the persona ef- fect has shown no significant learning gains produced by on- screen agents, although many studies note that students find an ITS with an on-screen more engaging than one without (Moundridou & Virvou, 2002). Our study is the first to assess the effect of the physical presence of a robot in an automated tutoring interaction. We use the task-performance measure of puzzle solving time in this work as well as several self-report measures. Methodology Participants There were 100 participants in this study, between 18 and 40 years of age. The study was conducted in New Haven, Con- necticut. Most participants were undergraduate and graduate students of Yale University. Each participant was assigned to one of five groups: (1) no lessons, (2) randomized lessons from a physically-present robot, (3) personalized lessons from a disembodied voice, (4) personalized lessons from a video representation of the robot, and (5) personalized lessons from <s> BIB009 </s> Social robots for education: A review <s> Benefits of social robots as tutoring agents <s> We present a socially assistive robot (SAR) system designed to engage elderly users in physical exercise. We discuss the system approach, design methodology, and implementation details, which incorporate insights from psychology research on intrinsic motivation, and we present five clear design principles for SAR-based therapeutic interventions. We then describe the system evaluation, consisting of a multi-session user study with older adults (n = 33), to evaluate the effectiveness of our SAR exercise system and to investigate the role of embodiment by comparing user evaluations of similar physically and virtually embodied coaches. The results validate the system approach and effectiveness at motivating physical exercise in older adults according to a variety of user performance and outcomes measures. The results also show a clear preference by older adults for the physically embodied robot coach over the virtual coach in terms of enjoyableness, helpfulness, and social attraction, among other factors. <s> BIB010 </s> Social robots for education: A review <s> Benefits of social robots as tutoring agents <s> This article presents a novel robotic partner which children can teach handwriting. The system relies on the learning by teaching paradigm to build an interaction, so as to stimulate meta-cognition, empathy and increased self-esteem in the child user. We hypothesise that use of a humanoid robot in such a system could not just engage an unmotivated student, but could also present the opportunity for children to experience physically-induced benefits encountered during human-led handwriting interventions, such as motor mimicry. By leveraging simulated handwriting on a synchronised tablet display, a NAO humanoid robot with limited fine motor capabilities has been configured as a suitably embodied handwriting partner. Statistical shape models derived from principal component analysis of a dataset of adult-written letter trajectories allow the robot to draw purposefully deformed letters. By incorporating feedback from user demonstrations, the system is then able to learn the optimal parameters for the appropriate shape models. Preliminary in situ studies have been conducted with primary school classes to obtain insight into children's use of the novel system. Children aged 6-8 successfully engaged with the robot and improved its writing to a level which they were satisfied with. The validation of the interaction represents a significant step towards an innovative use for robotics which addresses a widespread and socially meaningful challenge in education. <s> BIB011 </s> Social robots for education: A review <s> Benefits of social robots as tutoring agents <s> The research area of using robots to coach complex physical skills is underserved. Whereas robots have been used extensively in the form of robotic orthoses to rehabilitate early trauma patients, there is more that can be done to develop robots that help children, the elderly and late-stage rehabilitation patients to excel at physical skills. In order to do this, we must develop robots that do not actuate on the students, but coach them through hands-off modalities such as verbal advice and demonstrations. This approach requires sophisticated perception, and modeling of the student's movement in order to deliver effective advice. Preliminary results suggest that these goals can be achieved with consumer-grade sensing hardware. We present planned future work towards achieving this vision. <s> BIB012 </s> Social robots for education: A review <s> Benefits of social robots as tutoring agents <s> An increasing number of applications for social robots focuses on learning and playing with children. One of the unanswered questions is what kind of social character a robot should have in order to positively engage children in a task. In this paper, we present a study on the effect of two different social characters of a robot (peer vs. tutor) on children’s task engagement. We derived peer and tutor robot behaviors from the literature and we evaluated the two robot characters in a WoZ study where 10 pairs of children aged 6 to 9 played Tangram puzzles with a Nao robot. Our results show that in the peer character condition, children paid attention to the robot and the task for a longer period of time and solved the puzzles quicker and better than in the tutor character condition. <s> BIB013 </s> Social robots for education: A review <s> Benefits of social robots as tutoring agents <s> The application of social robots to the domain of education is becoming more prevalent. However, there remain a wide range of open issues, such as the effectiveness of robots as tutors on student learning outcomes, the role of social behaviour in teaching interactions, and how the embodiment of a robot influences the interaction. In this paper, we seek to explore children’s behaviour towards a robot tutor for children in a novel guided discovery learning interaction. Since the necessity of real robots (as opposed to virtual agents) in education has not been definitively established in the literature, the effect of robot embodiment is assessed. The results demonstrate that children overcome strong incorrect biases in the material to be learned, but with no significant differences between embodiment conditions. However, the data do suggest that the use of real robots carries an advantage in terms of social presence that could provide educational benefits. <s> BIB014 </s> Social robots for education: A review <s> Benefits of social robots as tutoring agents <s> As technology is increasingly integrated into the classroom, understanding the facilitators and barriers for deployment becomes an important part of the process. While systems that employ traditional WIMP-based interfaces have a well-established body of work describing their integration into classroom environments, more novel technologies generally lack such a foundation to guide their advancement. In this paper we present Robo-Tangible Activities for Geometry (rTAG), a tangible learning environment that utilizes a teachable agent framing, together with a physical robotic agent. We describe its deployment in a school environment, qualitatively analyzing how teachers chose to orchestrate its use, the value they saw in it, and the barriers they faced while organizing the sessions with their students. Based on this analysis, we extract four recommendations that aid in designing and deploying systems that make use of affordances that are similar to those of the rTAG system. <s> BIB015 </s> Social robots for education: A review <s> Benefits of social robots as tutoring agents <s> We are excited to welcome you to the Eleventh Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2016). The HRI Conference is a highly selective, single track, international meeting showcasing the best research in human-robot interaction, with roots in and broad participation from various communities of scholars, including but not limited to robotics, human-computer interaction, artificial intelligence, engineering, social and behavioral sciences, and design. ::: ::: The theme of this year's conference is "Natural Interaction," an increasingly important research focus and design goal as robotic technologies become incorporated into everyday life. Achieving natural human-robot interaction requires the input of many technical, social, and design disciplines, as well as reflection on the societal consequences and ethical significance of robotic development. To represent the multitude of disciplines and approaches that contribute to this work and the HRI field more generally in the conference program, we solicited and reviewed papers under four submission themes: "Studies of HRI", "Technical Advancements in HRI", "HRI Design", and "Theory and Method in HRI." Each submission theme was overseen by a dedicated theme chair and reviewed by a dedicated group of program committee members, who worked together with the program chairs to define and apply review criteria appropriate to each of the four contribution types. ::: ::: The conference attracted 181 submissions from Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and North America. Each full paper was aligned with a theme-appropriate subcommittee, and subsequently reviewed through a double-blind process, which was followed by a rebuttal phase, and shepherding where suggested by the program committee. As a result of the review process, the program committee selected 45 (24.8%) of the submissions for presentation as full papers at the conference. As the conference is jointly sponsored by IEEE and ACM, papers are archived in both IEEE Xplore and the ACM Digital Library. ::: ::: Along with the full papers, the conference program and proceedings include the Late Breaking Reports, Videos, Demos, and a new alt.HRI section. Out of 95 total submissions, 71 (74.7%) Late Breaking Reports were accepted and will be presented as posters at the conference. Eleven (85%) short videos were accepted for presentation during a dedicated video session from 13 submissions. The program also includes four demos of robot systems that participants will have an opportunity to interact with during the conference. We're very excited to introduce an alt.HRI session in this year's program, consisting of five papers (selected out of 11 submissions) that push the boundaries of thought and practice in the field. Finally, we have the pleasure of presenting three inspiring keynote speakers who will discuss topics relevant to HRI: Dr. Aude Billard from EPFL in Switzerland, Dr. Marc Sagar from the University of Auckland in New Zealand, and Dr. Robert Sparrow from Monash University in Australia. <s> BIB016 </s> Social robots for education: A review <s> Benefits of social robots as tutoring agents <s> Children with insufficient exposure to language during critical developmental periods in infancy are at risk for cognitive, language, and social deficits [55]. This is especially difficult for deaf infants, as more than 90% are born to hearing parents with little sign language experience [48]. We created an integrated multi-agent system involving a robot and virtual human designed to augment language exposure for 6-12 month old infants. Human-machine design for infants is challenging, as most screen-based media are unlikely to support learning in [33]. While presently, robots are incapable of the dexterity and expressiveness required for signing, even if it existed, developmental questions remain about the capacity for language from artificial agents to engage infants. Here we engineered the robot and avatar to provide visual language to effect socially contingent human conversational exchange. We demonstrate the successful engagement of our technology through case studies of deaf and hearing infants. <s> BIB017
The need for technological support in education is driven by demographic and economic factors. Shrinking school budgets, growing numbers of students per classroom, and the demand for greater personalization of curricula for children with diverse needs are fueling research into technology-based support that augments the efforts of parents and teachers. Most commonly, these systems take the form of a software system that provides one-on-one tutoring support. Social interaction enhances learning between humans, in terms of both cognitive and affective outcomes BIB001 BIB002 . Research has suggested that some of these behavioral influences also translate to interactions between robots and humans  BIB006 . Although robots that do not exhibit social behavior can be used as educational tools to teach students about technology [such as in BIB015 ], we limited our review to robots designed specifically to support education through social interactions. Because virtual agents (presented on laptops, tablets, or phones) can offer some of the same capabilities but without the expense of additional hardware, the need for maintenance, and the challenges of distribution and installation, the use of a robot in an educational setting must be explicitly justified. Compared with virtual agents, physically embodied robots offer three advantages: (i) they can be used for curricula or populations that require engagement with the physical world, (ii) users show more social behaviors that are beneficial for learning when engaging with a physically embodied system, and (iii) users show increased learning gains when interacting with physically embodied systems over virtual agents. Robots are a natural choice when the material to be taught requires direct physical manipulation of the world. For example, tutoring physical skills, such as handwriting BIB011 or basketball free throws BIB012 , may be more challenging with a virtual agent, and this approach is also taken in many rehabilitation-or therapyfocused applications BIB010 . In addition, certain populations may require a physically embodied system. Robots have already been proposed to aid individuals with visual impairments BIB016 and for typically developing children under the age of two BIB017 who show only minimal learning gains when provided with educational content via screens BIB008 . In addition, often there is an expectation for robot tutors to be able to move through dynamic and populated spaces and manipulate the physical environment. Although not always needed in the context of education, there are some scenarios where the learning experience benefits from the robot being able to manipulate objects and move autonomously, such as when supporting physical experimentation BIB013 or moving to the learner rather than the learner moving to the robot. These challenges are not exclusive to social robotics and robot tutors, but the added elements of having the robot operate near and with (young) learners add complexities that are often disregarded in navigation and manipulation. Physical robots are also more likely to elicit from users social behaviors that are beneficial to learning BIB014 . Robots can be more engaging and enjoyable than a virtual agent in cooperative tasks BIB003   and are often perceived more positively  BIB004  . Importantly for tutoring systems, physically present robots yield significantly more compliance to its requests, even when those requests are challenging, than a video representation of the same robot BIB007 . Last, physical robots have enhanced learning and affected later behavioral choice more substantially than virtual agents. Compared with instructions from virtual characters, videos of robots, or audioonly lessons, robots have produced more rapid learning in cognitive puzzles BIB009 . Similar results have been demonstrated when coaching users to select healthier snacks BIB004 and when helping users continue a 6-week weight-loss program BIB005 . A comprehensive review  concluded that the physical presence of a robot led to positive perceptions and increased task performance when compared with virtual agents or robots displayed on screens.