Abstract
Today, robots are studied and expected to be used in a range of social roles within classrooms. Yet, due to a number of limitations in social robots, robot interactions should be expected to occasionally suffer from troublesome situations and breakdowns. In this paper, we explore this issue by studying how children handle interaction trouble with a robot tutee in a classroom setting. The findings have implications not only for the design of robots, but also for evaluating their benefit in, and for, educational contexts. In this study, we conducted video analysis of children's group interactions with a robot tutee in a classroom setting, in order to explore the nature of these troubles in the wild. Within each group, children took turns acting as the primary interaction partner for the robot within the context of a mathematics game. Specifically, we examined what types of situations constitute trouble in these child–robot interactions, the strategies that individual children employ to cope with this trouble, as well as the strategies employed by other actors witnessing the trouble. By means of Interaction Analysis, we studied the video recordings of nine group interaction sessions (n = 33 children) in primary school grades 2 and 4. We found that sources of trouble related to the robot's social norm violations, which could be either active or passive. In terms of strategies, the children either persisted in their attempts at interacting with the robot by adapting their behavior in different ways, distanced themselves from the robot, or sought the help of present adults (i.e., a researcher in a teacher role, or an experimenter) or their peers (i.e., the child's classmates in each group). In terms of the witnessing actors, they addressed the trouble by providing guidance directed at the child interacting with the robot, or by intervening in the interaction. These findings reveal the unspoken rules by which children orient toward social robots, the complexities of child–robot interaction in the wild, and provide insights on children's perspectives and expectations of social robots in classroom contexts.
Highlights
Over the past decades, research has explored the possibility of using social robots in a range of educational roles, including as teachers and tutors, peers, and novices (Belpaeme et al, 2018)
We present a qualitative analysis of video data obtained from a Child–Robot Interaction (CRI) field trial in a primary school classroom
We have studied a robot tutee only, we believe that our findings can be valuable for the development of social robots for children in general
Summary
Research has explored the possibility of using social robots in a range of educational roles, including as teachers and tutors, peers, and novices (Belpaeme et al, 2018). The EMOTE project developed a robot with empathic qualities, which could tutor primary school students on tasks related to geography and sustainable development (Serholt and Barendregt, 2016; Obaid et al, 2018; Alves-Oliveira et al, 2019), the L2TOR project developed a robot that could tutor preschool children on second language learning (Vogt et al, 2019), whereas the CoWriter project developed a robot in the role of a novice, which children could teach handwriting skills to (El-Hamamsy et al, 2019) The motivations behind these efforts range from explorations of robots as technologies for supporting children’s learning [e.g., language learning (KoryWestlund and Breazeal, 2019)] and the development of targeted skills [e.g., self-regulated learning (Jones and Castellano, 2018)], to a conception of robots as solutions to various educational challenges, such as teachers’ workload (Movellan et al, 2005) and a global teacher shortage (Edwards and Cheok, 2018). By identifying and understanding the situations where robots fail in social interaction, it is possible to critically reflect on how to handle such situations from an educational and design perspective, while furthering our understanding of how children interact with robots
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