Social robot tutoring for child second language learning

An increasing amount of research is being conducted to determine how a robot tutor should behave socially in educa- tional interactions with children. Both human-human and human- robot interaction literature predicts an increase in learning with increased social availability of a tutor, where social availability has verbal and nonverbal components. Prior work has shown that greater availability in the nonverbal behaviour of a robot tutor has a positive impact on child learning. This paper presents a study with 67 children to explore how social aspects of a tutor robot’s speech influences their perception of the robot and their language learning in an interaction. Children perceive the difference in social behaviour between ‘low’ and ‘high’ verbal availability conditions, and improve significantly between a pre- and a post-test in both conditions. A longer-term retention test taken the following week showed that the children had retained almost all of the information they had learnt. However, learning was not affected by which of the robot behaviours they had been exposed to. It is suggested that in this short-term interaction context, additional effort in developing social aspects of a robot’s verbal behaviour may not return the desired positive impact on learning gains

The impact of robot tutor nonverbal social behavior on child learning

Several studies have indicated that interacting with social robots in educational contexts may lead to a greater learning than interactions with computers or virtual agents. As such, an increasing amount of social human–robot interaction research is being conducted in the learning domain, particularly with children. However, it is unclear precisely what social behavior a robot should employ in such interactions. Inspiration can be taken from human–human studies; this often leads to an assumption that the more social behavior an agent utilizes, the better the learning outcome will be. We apply a nonverbal behavior metric to a series of studies in which children are taught how to identify prime numbers by a robot with various behavioral manipulations. We find a trend, which generally agrees with the pedagogy literature, but also that overt nonverbal behavior does not account for all learning differences. We discuss the impact of novelty, child expectations, and responses to social cues to further the understanding of the relationship between robot social behavior and learning. We suggest that the combination of nonverbal behavior and social cue congruency is necessary to facilitate learning

Innovations In The English Classroom : The Students’ Perceptions Toward Robot Media

This study sought to pinpoint key requirements for incorporating technology into education. A survey of junior high schools was used in the study which took a qualitative approach. A research sample of 35 students who were chosen purposively for the study were given the questionnaire as a data gathering tool with three components; the utility/feature of usage, the interest, and the pedagogical content of the Evoce robot. The data was analyzed by using the Guttman scale has a CS of at least 0.60 and a CR of at least 0.90, it was considered to meet the unidimental and cumulative features. The findings showed the mean of CR from three indicators was 0.908, which means the result of CR was valid while the mean score was CS was 0.798, which means that the coefficients of scalability were considered good. Based on the result findings students' opinions about the usage of the Evoce robot as technology in the learning process were inversely correlated with their usage of learning media was helping them in attaining new media of teaching was the Evoce robot. It recommended that robots might give an alternative interesting media in class, especially for teaching vocabulary

Social robots and L2 teaching for children: a preliminary study on the embodiment of gestures

Experimental research confirms that using social robots with pre-school children as tutors for their learning has important positive effects in terms of children's learning and emotional involvement. In particular, the use of social robots for language learning (L1 and L2) leads to more learned words and a better memory of them. However, many technological limitations prevent from fully implementing the concept of embodiment, a distinctive feature of robotic technology compared to other computer-based technologies, and especially of gestures. In order to contribute to solve the problem, in a preliminary psychological test with Italian children learning English as L2, it was shown that appropriate modifications of the learning environment combined with a more limited use of gestures allow to achieve better results in terms of learning than a larger use of gestures in a less structured environment. If experimentally verified, these results would suggest the development of learning architectures which offer more affordances with respect to the task at hand, while implementing more limited forms of embodiment that are in line with current technological limitations. Robot sociali e insegnamento di L2 ai bambini: uno studio preliminare sull’embodiment della gestualitàLe ricerche sperimentali confermano che l’utilizzo di robot sociali in funzione di tutor per l’apprendimento di bambini nella fascia di età prescolare ha importanti effetti positivi in termini di apprendimento e di coinvolgimento emotivo dei bambini. In particolare, l’uso di robot in supporto all’apprendimento linguistico (L1 e L2) si traduce in un numero maggiore di parole apprese e in un migliore ricordo delle stesse. Numerosi limitazioni tecnologiche impediscono tuttavia la piena realizzazione nei robot sociali del concetto di embodiment, in particolare per quanto riguarda la gestualità. Proprio per contribuire a dare una soluzione al problema, in una prova psicologica preliminare con bambini italiani che apprendono la lingua inglese come L2 si dimostra che in un ambiente di apprendimento opportunamente strutturato una gestualità più limitata permette di conseguire migliori risultati di apprendimento e ricordo delle parole apprese rispetto a un uso maggiore della gestualità in un ambiente meno organizzato. Se sperimentalmente verificati, tali risultati indirizzerebbero verso lo sviluppo di architetture dell’ambiente di apprendimento più ricche di affordance rispetto al compito che consentano conseguentemente di implementare forme di embodiment più limitate in linea con le limitazioni tecnologiche attuali

Using social robots for language learning: are we there yet?

Along with the development of speech and language technologies and growing market interest, social robots have attracted more academic and commercial attention in recent decades. Their multimodal embodiment offers a broad range of possibilities, which have gained importance in the education sector. It has also led to a new technology-based field of language education: robot-assisted language learning (RALL). RALL has developed rapidly in second language learning, especially driven by the need to compensate for the shortage of first-language tutors. There are many implementation cases and studies of social robots, from early government-led attempts in Japan and South Korea to increasing research interests in Europe and worldwide. Compared with RALL used for English as a foreign language (EFL), however, there are fewer studies on applying RALL for teaching Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). One potential reason is that RALL is not well-known in the CFL field. This scope review paper attempts to fill this gap by addressing the balance between classroom implementation and research frontiers of social robots. The review first introduces the technical tool used in RALL, namely the social robot, at a high level. It then presents a historical overview of the real-life implementation of social robots in language classrooms in East Asia and Europe. It then provides a summary of the evaluation of RALL from the perspectives of L2 learners, teachers and technology developers. The overall goal of this paper is to gain insights into RALL’s potential and challenges and identify a rich set of open research questions for applying RALL to CFL. It is hoped that the review may inform interdisciplinary analysis and practice for scientific research and front-line teaching in future

Guidelines for Designing Social Robots as Second Language Tutors

In recent years, it has been suggested that social robots have potential as tutors and educators for both children and adults. While robots have been shown to be effective in teaching knowledge and skill-based topics, we wish to explore how social robots can be used to tutor a second language to young children. As language learning relies on situated, grounded and social learning, in which interaction and repeated practice are central, social robots hold promise as educational tools for supporting second language learning. This paper surveys the developmental psychology of second language learning and suggests an agenda to study how core concepts of second language learning can be taught by a social robot. It suggests guidelines for designing robot tutors based on observations of second language learning in human–human scenarios, various technical aspects and early studies regarding the effectiveness of social robots as second language tutors

Integrating Socially Assistive Robots into Language Tutoring Systems. A Computational Model for Scaffolding Young Children's Foreign Language Learning

Schodde T. Integrating Socially Assistive Robots into Language Tutoring Systems. A Computational Model for Scaffolding Young Children's Foreign Language Learning. Bielefeld: Universität Bielefeld; 2019.Language education is a global and important issue nowadays, especially for young children since their later educational success build on it. But learning a language is a complex task that is known to work best in a social interaction and, thus, personalized sessions tailored to the individual knowledge and needs of each child are needed to allow for teachers to optimally support them. However, this is often costly regarding time and personnel resources, which is one reasons why research of the past decades investigated the benefits of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs). But although ITSs can help out to provide individualized one-on-one tutoring interactions, they often lack of social support. This dissertation provides new insights on how a Socially Assistive Robot (SAR) can be employed as a part of an ITS, building a so-called "Socially Assistive Robot Tutoring System" (SARTS), to provide social support as well as to personalize and scaffold foreign language learning for young children in the age of 4-6 years. As basis for the SARTS a novel approach called A-BKT is presented, which allows to autonomously adapt the tutoring interaction to the children's individual knowledge and needs. The corresponding evaluation studies show that the A-BKT model can significantly increase student's learning gains and maintain a higher engagement during the tutoring interaction. This is partly due to the models ability to simulate the influences of potential actions on all dimensions of the learning interaction, i.e., the children's learning progress (cognitive learning), affective state, engagement (affective learning) and believed knowledge acquisition (perceived learning). This is particularly important since all dimensions are strongly interconnected and influence each other, for example, a low engagement can cause bad learning results although the learner is already quite proficient. However, this also yields the necessity to not only focus on the learner's cognitive learning but to equally support all dimensions with appropriate scaffolding actions. Therefore an extensive literature review, observational video recordings and expert interviews were conducted to find appropriate actions applicable for a SARTS to support each learning dimension. The subsequent evaluation study confirms that the developed scaffolding techniques are able to support young children’s learning process either by re-engaging them or by providing transparency to support their perception of the learning process and to reduce uncertainty. Finally, based on educated guesses derived from the previous studies, all identified strategies are integrated into the A-BKT model. The resulting model called ProTM is evaluated by simulating different learner types, which highlight its ability to autonomously adapt the tutoring interactions based on the learner's answers and provided dis-engagement cues. Summarized, this dissertation yields new insights into the field of SARTS to provide personalized foreign language learning interactions for young children, while also rising new important questions to be studied in the future

A Deweyan-Based Curriculum for Teaching Ethical Inquiry in the Language Arts

Informed by Dewey’s account of ethical experience and the nature of philosophical inquiry, my theory of ethical inquiry has four components: body-based reasonableness, moral imagination, emotions as judgments, and ethical content. Bodybased reasonableness is thinking that is critical, creative, committed, contextual, and embodied (Sprod, 2001). Exercising embodied reasonableness in aesthetic education means that we pay critical attention and seek to address the ethical and social aspects of art. We pay attention to fiction that will potentially engage students in a constant process of ethical judgment, depicting characters and situations that call for our moral evaluation. In a similar vein, exposure to certain art can sensitize us to the right reasons and objects for our emotions. Vehicles for ethical inquiry are those by which human situations can be understood and are found in the English Language Arts curriculum and the arts, such as: The Odyssey by Homer, Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare, Prokofiev, and Tchaikovsky, The Joy Luck Club by Tan, and works by the artists Frida Kahlo and Kiki Smith. Highlighted are the issues of body, sexuality and gender, principal areas of ethical concern and central to adolescence. The pedagogy by which students can adequately address ethical concerns is Philosophy for Children, where characters in a narrative text exemplify discursive modes of thought and the conduct of ethical inquiry

Perspectives of university teaching in Costa Rica in times of digital media

Perspectives of university teaching in Costa Rica in times of digital media examines an educational approach to understand the space of learning that takes place in higher education. For that, a selection of viewpoints of digital media and university teaching are discussed in the light of a tradition: the Journeyman Years. The key research question is: what is a space of learning in higher education from the students and professor's perspectives at the Universidad de Costa Rica? Pertinent to this topic, other sub-questions are: what kind of spaces of learning are being ofered at the Universidad de Costa Rica? How to reconsider the space of learning at a university? Chapter Two introduces the Wanderjahre (Journeyman Years) story, a leading metaphor for this manuscript where an approach to learning in terms of space is presented. Chapter Three examines two diferent knowledge approaches: frst, mechanistic thinking is highlighted in relation to digital media. Humans learn of natural phenomena through rational means, seeking to demystify and unveil a true world. Second, romantic thinking is featured in relation to higher education. Individuals learn about the world by engaging in practice while being social, experiencing directly the world in continuous change. Chapter Four presents an interpretation of the previous theoretical perspectives. After a selection of reviewed concepts, Learning by Wandering is proposed, a structure to analyze the construction of the space of learning in higher education. Chapter Five describes an ethnographic case study of the space of learning at the Universidad de Costa Rica, where 150 students and eight university teachers throughout diferent contexts are studied. Chapter Six features the major relevant fndings in my thesis to analyze university teaching in terms of space. In this chapter, a list of recommendations for the Universidad de Costa Rica is ofered, in order to foster higher education in terms of space