The Impact of Robot Co-location on Student Learning Experiences when Reasoning About Geometry Conjectures

The application of social robots in education is an emerging field that has the potential to transform the way we teach and learn. In this work, we compare the effects of a physically co-located social robot and a virtual social robot on learning experiences, as students reason about geometry conjectures. Our results show that the co-located robot was treated much more socially than the virtual robot in this context, and improved overall student learning experiences. Specifically, it increased the perceived effectiveness of the interaction to lower anxiety, provide companionship, and support reasoning and comprehension. These results support the use of co-located, physically present robots to complement learning environments in scenarios where the learning task is improved through social interaction, including verbal reasoning and use of gestures. This research contributes to the growing body of literature on the use of social robots in education and highlights the potential for further research on this subject.