Interaction with social robots for education: Robot-assisted learning for students with diverse language backgrounds

The project aims to explore the use of human-robot interaction (HRI) in adult education in Sweden, focusing on students with Swedish as a second language (L2).

The project will be conducted over 3-years, collecting and analyzing data from vocational education and training (VET) courses. We will first collect ethnographic observational data from VET classroom interactions.

Based on these observations, HRI scenarios will be designed in which both L1 and L2 speakers of Swedish engage with a social robot in content-based tasks from VET courses.

We will compare the data collected from interaction among human participants (teacher-learner and learner-learner) with that of learners with social robots.

With interviews and surveys on the one hand and using ethnomethodology and multimodal conversation analysis (EMCA) on the other hand, we will show if and how students’ learning procedures may be supported or challenged in interaction with the robots.

The project will contribute to our understanding of various aspects of using HRI in adult education, particularly for L2 speaking learners, and the possibilities of using educational robots to help meet the increasing social demands for working-age adults (among whom many L2 speaking) to develop new competencies and skills by participating in VET.