The positive effects of verbal encouragement in mathematics education using a social robot

Abstract

Studies have shown that the use of verbal encouragement strategies in education is able to maximize learning. This idea is derived from traditional classroom settings where teachers use a multitude of behavioral strategies to maintain the students' level of engagement. Motivated by these educational practices, we discuss the use of a Socially Interactive Robotic Tutor (SIRT) that incorporates a variety of verbal cues into multiple math learning scenarios. In this paper, we present the robotic tutor, the methods used to engage students in the learning scenario, and results from integrating the robotic tutor in the classroom environment. Results derived from 44 students engaging with SIRT during a tablet-based math test show that, when compared to non-interactive methods, verbal cues are able to increase and/or maintain student engagement regardless of student age and math content level.

Towards a Formal Definition of Educational Robotics

“…Moreover participants highlight the importance of visualizing geometrical concepts in the real world and their interest in interacting with the robot in petlike way. Other researchers focused on the impact of verbal cues given by a robot to participants [21], suggesting that it has a positive impact. Likewise Castellano et al [22] as shown that people prefer robots that show empathy.…”

Introducing storytelling to educational robotic activities

“…Moreover participants highlight the importance of visualising geometrical concepts in the real world and their interest in interacting with the robot in pet-like way. Other researchers focused on the impact of verbal cues given by a robot to participants [16], suggesting that it has a positive impact. Nevertheless, their research is focused on the social aspects of autonomous robots instead of the correct use in education.…”

Gestural behavioral implementation on a humanoid robotic platform for effective social interaction

“…This will allow us to tease out data associated with the robot and/or the gesture design and, ultimately, further generalize the model to increase its value. In addition, we would like to combine the evaluated happy and sad gestures with the evaluated verbal expressions in [4] to observe its impact in social interaction. Lastly, we will incorporate these gestures and verbal expressions into a learning scenario to evaluate how engagement, motivation, and academic performance are affected.…”

“…This, in effect, will increase a person's willingness to engage in the social interaction. In the realm of human-robot interaction (HRI), emotions have the capability to enhance scenarios involving education [1]- [4], physical therapy [5]- [7], play partners [8], [9], companions [9], [10], elderly care [11], and weight-loss [10].…”

“…In [4] we evaluated the positive effects of vocal expression during social interaction. Moving forward in this study, we examine implementation, perception, and potential impact of solely gestural behaviors in a similar setting.…”