Personalizing robot tutors to individuals' learning differences

Abstract

In education research, there is a widely-cited result called "Bloom's two sigma" that characterizes the differences in learning outcomes between students who receive one-on-one tutoring and those who receive traditional classroom instruction [1]. Tutored students scored in the 95 th percentile, or two sigmas above the mean, on average, compared to students who received traditional classroom instruction. In human-robot interaction research, however, there is relatively little work exploring the potential benefits of personalizing a robot's actions to an individual's strengths and weaknesses. In this study, participants solved grid-based logic puzzles with the help of a personalized or non-personalized robot tutor. Participants' puzzle solving times were compared between two non-personalized control conditions and two personalized conditions (n=80). Although the robot's personalizations were less sophisticated than what a human tutor can do, we still witnessed a "one-sigma" improvement (68 th percentile) in post-tests between treatment and control groups. We present these results as evidence that even relatively simple personalizations can yield significant benefits in educational or assistive human-robot interactions.

Personalization Framework for Adaptive Robotic Feeding Assistance

“…In education, it has been applied to Socially Assistive Robot (SAR) tutors that support the teaching task [5,10,12]. Baraka and Veloso [2] define three user models to adapt the luminous interactions between a robot and the user over time, learning the model parameters from user feedback.…”

Motivational Effects of Acknowledging Feedback from a Socially Assistive Robot

“…In our previous work we have investigated the differences of performance-based vs. non-performance-based feedback for users doing a cognitive task [11]. Personalized feedback from robotic tutors has been investigated in [2]. Both works support that individualized feedback based on the user's performance can increase the tutor's effectiveness.…”

“…Recently, assistive robots have been designed to support people on different rehabilitation and cognitive tasks by the robot's presence and assistance [1,2]. Moreover, virtual agents and socially assistive robots (SAR) have been introduced as a useful tool to promote a healthy lifestyle, support for dieting or exercising besides conservative methods [1,3,4].…”

“…Therefore, different approaches from sociology or psychology have already been exploited (i.e. goal-setting, empathy, backstory or personalization [2,[5][6][7]). One other important interactional aspect that sport instructors are regularly incorporating into exercising is acknowledgement.…”

Nonverbal Immediacy as a Characterisation of Social Behaviour for Human–Robot Interaction

“…The personalised robot provided an indication that children's perceived enjoyment of learning was enhanced, although too few subjects took part to make conclusions about learning effects. Other authors have personalised human-robot interaction in learning contexts through manipulating the timing of lessons [80], or through setting personalised goals [63]. However, this becomes more about teaching strategy and does not help to generate lower-level social behaviour.…”