Social robots can be used in education as tutors or peer learners. They have been shown to be effective at increasing cognitive and affective outcomes and have achieved outcomes similar to those of human tutoring on restricted tasks. This is largely because of their physical presence, which traditional learning technologies lack. We review the potential of social robots in education, discuss the technical challenges, and consider how the robot's appearance and behavior affect learning outcomes.

A state-of-the-art social robot was immersed in a classroom of toddlers for >5 months. The quality of the interaction between children and robots improved steadily for 27 sessions, quickly deteriorated for 15 sessions when the robot was reprogrammed to behave in a predictable manner, and improved in the last three sessions when the robot displayed again its full behavioral repertoire. Initially, the children treated the robot very differently than the way they treated each other. By the last sessions, 5 months later, they treated the robot as a peer rather than as a toy. Results indicate that current robot technology is surprisingly close to achieving autonomous bonding and socialization with human toddlers for sustained periods of time and that it could have great potential in educational settings assisting teachers and enriching the classroom environment.human-robot interaction ͉ social development ͉ social robotics

In contrast to conventional teaching agents (including robots) that were designed to play the role of human teachers or caregivers, we propose the opposite scenario in which robots receive instruction or care from children. We hypothesize that by using this care-receiving robot, we may construct a new educational framework whose goal is to promote children's spontaneous learning by teaching through their teaching the robot. In this paper, we describe the introduction of a care-receiving robot into a classroom at an English language school for Japanese children (3-6 years of age) and then conduct an experiment to evaluate if the care-receiving robot can promote their learning using English verbs. The results suggest that the idea of a care-receiving robot is feasible and that the robot can help children learn new English verbs efficiently. In addition, we report on investigations into several forms of teaching performed by children, which were revealed through observations of the children, parent interviews, and other useful knowledge. These can be used to improve the design of care-receiving robots for educational purposes.

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