The Desire for Social Robots to Support English Language Learners: Exploring Robot Perceptions of Teachers, Parents, and Students

Abstract

Currently there are 4.9 million English Language Learners (ELLs) in the United States, however, only 2% of educators are trained to support these vulnerable students. Educational robots show promise for language acquisition and may provide valuable support for ELLs, yet, little is known about social robots for this population. Inviting participants as cultural informants can ensure that the robot is appropriately designed, situated and adopted into that educational community. Therefore, we conducted an exploratory study using interactive group interviews with 95 ELLs (kindergarten through fifth grade) from 18 different home language backgrounds. We also interviewed 39 ELL parents and eight elementary school educators to understand their views of educational robots. Responses to robot images suggested a preference for a popular educational robot. Parents expressed a strong desire for educational robots to support their children at school. While children embraced the idea of a robot at school, some expressed concerns about the potential for robots to be disruptive. School educators saw the potential for educational robots to support teachers in meeting instructional needs but also raised salient concerns. Exploring social robots with ELLs as cultural informants was a valuable exploration to determine important factors in social robot design and implementation for a diverse educational setting.

Factors affecting parental intention to use AI-based social robots for children’s ESL learning

“…To date, very few studies have investigated parents' perceptions on AI-based social robots' usage for language learning (e.g., Lin et al, 2021;Louie et al, 2021;Tolksdorf et al, 2021) and most have used qualitative approaches. Those studies have shown that parents found educational robots to be useful and fun (Smakman et al, 2020) for their children's ESL learning.…”

“…Third, this study specifically focused on the effect of physical risks on utilitarian and hedonic motivation. Future studies may consider incorporating privacy risk perceptions, which has been identified as an issue of concern for some parents with respect to using robots in children ESL learning contexts (e.g., Louie et al, 2021). Finally, future researchers should attempt to add other factors that may influence utilitarian motivation (e.g., ease of use: Chang et al, 2023) or hedonic motivation (e.g., flow: Zhao & Bacao, 2021), or integrate variables from the Hedonic-Motivation System Adoption Model proposed by Lowry et al (2013), which may produce a better explanation of the variance in parental willingness to adopt AI-based social robots.…”

Designing for culturally responsive social robots: An application of a participatory framework

“…For more detailed information about this study, see ( Björling et al, 2021 ). Having learned from a previous study ( Louie et al, 2021 ) that language learners, their teachers and families preferred the Nao robot form factor, we chose to use the Nao robot for this study. It was also imperative to conduct the study in a real-world setting to better understand how interactions might differ from expectations.…”

“…In this paper, we discuss the rationale for a participatory approach to social robot design. We then present three case studies [two of which have been published in greater detail ( Björling et al, 2021 ; Louie et al, 2021 )] as illustrations of three distinct principles for working with culturally and linguistically diverse children.…”