The effects of robot-assisted language learning: A meta-analysis

Given the importance of learner–interlocutor interactions, social robots have received considerable attention in the field of language learning, as this technology can physically accompany learners, is equipped with common social behaviors, and can effectively communicate with learners for language acquisition. In line with the continuous efforts to examine the effects of using social robots in language learning, this study is a meta-analysis aiming to integrate the findings of previous experimental studies on robot-assisted language learning (RALL), focusing on language learning achievement. To this end, we selected 12 independent samples (N = 522) from the initial pool of 16 empirical studies—including 23 independent samples (N = 1147)—and computed effect sizes along with their standard errors. The results indicated that RALL had a medium-sized average effect (d = 0.59, SE = 0.09, 95% CI: 0.41–0.76) compared to non-RALL conditions, such as traditional learning conditions without technology (e.g., teacher-only) or other technology-mediated conditions (e.g., virtual agents and tablet PCs). We further identified several moderator variables (i.e., age group, target language, language domain, robots’ role, interaction type, type of non-RALL condition), and provided an in-depth discussion on how these variables were related to the effectiveness of using robots for language learning.     

Development and validation of an educational robot attitude scale (ERAS) for secondary school students

Humanoid robots equipped with social skills have come to be used increasingly in the field of education across various subfields such as science education, special education, and foreign language education. In order to enhance the use of humanoid robots in educational settings, and to comprehensively evaluate its impact on the transformation of the class, understanding students’ attitudes towards the use of robots for educational purposes plays a critical role. This paper outlines the implementation and validation procedures of an educational robot attitude scale (ERAS) developed to measure the attitudes of secondary school students towards the use of humanoid robots in educational settings. The sample of the study comprised of 232 secondary school students. The development and validation process consisted of exploratory factor analysis and convergent validity. The developed scale consists of 17 items and represents four factors of students’ attitude: engagement, enjoyment, anxiety and intention. These four factors accounted for 66% of the total variance of the scale. Internal consistency coefficient for the whole scale was found .90 according to the reliability analysis. The results of the study suggest that the scale is a valid, reliable, and efficient tool for measuring the dimensions of students’ attitudes towards humanoid robots in educational settings.     

Promoting Interaction with Children using Augmentative Communication through a Peer‐directed Intervention

One factor that is critical to the successful integration of children using augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems is establishing interaction with peers. AAC systems have the potential to increase the opportunities for interaction, but successful social interaction is dependent on a range of factors including the communicative knowledge, skills, and attitudes of partners. The present study attempted to increase the quantity of social interaction in classroom settings between children (aged 5 to 9 years) using AAC systems and their peers. A multifaceted intervention was directed at communicative partners, and most particularly, peers. The study was 15 weeks in duration and utilised a multiple baseline across subjects design. The study demonstrated the effectiveness of an intervention to increase social interaction.     

Variation in the effectiveness of instructional interactions across preschool classroom settings and learning activities

This exploratory study examined the extent to which the effectiveness of instructional interactions varies among classroom social settings (i.e., large group, free choice, meals, and routines), learning activities (i.e., shared reading, literacy, math, science, social studies, and esthetics), or their combination. Participants were 314 preschool teachers primarily serving children from low-income backgrounds. Instructional interactions were measured in multiple cycles across one day of classroom observation as teachers engaged in a variety of settings and learning activities. Linear mixed models indicated that the effectiveness of teachers’ instructional interactions was generally higher in the large group setting than in free choice, meals, and routine settings. When considering settings and learning activities in combination, teachers displayed the most effective global instructional interactions when leading science activities in large group or free choice settings, and the most effective literacy-focused interactions during large group literacy activities.     

Facilitating the social participation of pupils with special educational needs in mainstream schools: A review of school-based interventions

Inclusive education of pupils with special educational needs (SEN) has become a global trend. However, a considerable number of studies have shown that mere enrolment in mainstream classrooms is not enough to support the social participation of pupils with SEN. These children are at risk of experiencing difficulties in their involvement with peers at school. Thus, the question arises of how social participation can be fostered in mainstream classrooms. A systematic review of 35 studies was conducted to investigate which interventions are effective in inclusive mainstream preschool and elementary classrooms. Teaching interaction strategies to typically developing pupils, group activities in the academic context (cooperative learning and peer-tutoring), support groups for pupils with SEN, and training paraprofessionals to facilitate social interactions, were found to improve the social participation of pupils with SEN in general education classrooms. Nevertheless, there is need for more intervention studies implementing a variety of strategies and including different groups of pupils with SEN.     

A robot is watching me!: Five-year-old children care about their reputation after interaction with a social robot

Since robots are becoming involved in children's lives, it is urgent to determine how children perceive robots. The present study assessed whether Japanese 5-year-olds care about their reputation when interacting with a social robot. Children were given stickers and asked to divide them between themselves and an absent recipient. Results revealed that children (N = 112, 55 boys, 57 girls) strategically shared more stickers when being watched by a social interactive robot than by an attentional but non-interactive robot or a still robot. Additionally, children (N = 36, 18 boys, 18 girls) attributed higher psychological properties to social robots. This study is the first to show that 5-year-olds care about their reputations from social robots.     

Social Presence in Synchronous Virtual Learning Situations: The Role of Nonverbal Signals Displayed by Avatars

Social factors play an important role in determining whether instructional communication in computer-supported settings will be successful. Social presence is a social factor, specifically addressing the feeling of being present with another person in a virtual environment. This article describes possibilities to influence the feeling of social presence in synchronous learning scenarios using desktop collaborative virtual environments (CVEs). Desktop CVEs are technically simple compared with immersive CVEs and can be adapted according to the needs of the users. In this article, possible adaptations are described using the example of the desktop CVE virtual team room. In CVEs, users are represented as avatars. Avatars may or may not convey nonverbal signals. The focus of the article is on whether the actual use of nonverbal signals can affect the sense of social presence and thus help to establish and maintain the learner's motivation and provide support for structuring social interaction in learning situations. The paper provides a review of exploratory studies and experiments as well as a report on the author's own studies. Future research questions concerning learning in CVEs are discussed.     

Adult learners’ social connectedness and online participation: the importance of online interaction quality

ABSTRACT

Online interaction has been associated with positive outcomes, academically and psychologically. Regarding the latter, social connectedness has been recognised as an important outcome on the basis of its link to subjective well-being and course satisfaction. In adult educational settings, how online interaction can foster social connectedness has not been widely examined. The study investigates how (1) adult learners’ online participation operationalised as discussion contribution, collaborative facilitation, and social interaction, and (2) their perceived online interaction quality are related to their feeling of social connectedness. The role of online interaction quality related to the three types of online participation and social connectedness is also examined. A questionnaire was developed to collect data from adult learner participants in Belgium (N?=?170). Multiple regressions and mediation analysis were conducted. The result shows that collaborative facilitation and online interaction quality significantly contribute to adult learners’ perceptions of social connectedness. Furthermore, the finding reveals that online interaction quality fully mediates the relationship between discussion contribution, social interaction, and social connectedness. Thus, the implications for research and instructional design are discussed.     

Educators' perspectives on working with a humanoid robot in a French preschool class for autistic children

Humanoid robots have shown to provide interesting perspectives for autistic children. Yet, few studies have looked at educators' point of view on the use of such robots in educational settings. This paper presents a case study of the use of a humanoid robot, NAO, in a French preschool class dedicated to autistic children. Our work focuses on the perspectives of the adults working with these children. We interviewed the professional staff about changes in their teaching due to the presence of the robot, about the effects on the pupils' behaviour, and about the collaboration between the special needs teacher, the special needs support worker and the operational specialist from the digital education department of the district academic head office. Four themes were identified: joint reflection and collaboration when working with NAO, working with NAO, impact of NAO on pupils, impact of NAO on adults. The professionals underscored the necessity of adopting certain attitudes, in particular, the most neutral facial expression possible, so as not to disturb the children's learning process. They were under the impression that the robot had a beneficial effect on the pupils in terms of learning and social skills, and that it facilitated collaboration among them.     

Social interaction development among behaviorally handicapped preschool children: Research and educational implications

Literature is reviewed that documents the effectiveness of a behavioral approach for increasing the social behaviors of behaviorally handicapped preschool children. However, this literature also suggests that reciprocal interaction between target subjects and significant others seldom generalized beyond treatment settings. The importance of developing positive, reciprocal interaction has been well documented. The results of observational studies suggest that with respect to both quantity and quality of interaction, the child creates his own social environment. For example, the passive, withdrawn child is the more frequent recipient of social rejection than is the more socially active child; the physically aggressive child receives more hostile social bids from peers than less aggressive youngsters; and, of course, the child who initiates positive interaction with peers tends to receive more positive social attention than less socially adept youngsters. Thus, children's behavior patterns tend to set the occasion for that kind of social approach by peers that validates, in a sense, their own approach to peers. If affective education for young handicapped children is to become a reality, additional research is necessary to identify those response patterns that set the occasion for positive reciprocal interaction.     

Social IEP Objectives, Teacher Talk, and Peer Interaction in Inclusive and Segregated Preschool Settings

The purpose of this study was to examine: (a) the role of teacher talk in promoting peer interaction, (b) the adequacy of social IEP objectives to reflect children’s social functioning and guide provision of teacher talk, and (c) differences in children’s peer interaction and teacher talk in inclusive and segregated settings. Thirty children with disabilities and their teachers participated. Overall, we observed low rates of teacher talk thought to support peer interaction; however, when teachers verbally facilitated peer interaction, children were observed interacting more frequently with peers. Children’s social IEPs accurately reflected their current level of social functioning. However, the social IEPs appeared to fail to influence teacher intervention. Finally, children with disabilities in inclusive settings interacted with peers more than children in segregated settings, even though there was no significant difference in amount of teacher talk in the two settings.     

Social engagement, attention and competence of preschoolers with hearing loss

The social engagement, social attention skills and social competence of 10 hearing preschoolers and 10 preschoolers with hearing loss were investigated during free play in inclusive oral kindergarten settings using a three-level hierarchical model. When comparing the types of opportunities, at the first level, the children with hearing loss created significantly fewer opportunities through visual regard and interaction. At the second level, for social attention skills, this group scored significantly higher on distractibility, and significantly lower on alert, sustained and focused attention. For the third level, social competence, no statistically significant differences were found between the two groups. Discriminant Function Analysis showed that the function that discriminated maximally between the two groups of participants was composed only of amount of interaction at Level 1. Children scoring highly on this function were also more likely to have the ability to focus their attention and manage divided attention, to be reciprocal, and to demonstrate mutuality and problem-solving skills with peers.     

Effective Social Interaction Strategies for Inclusive Settings

Many strategies and interventions exist in the education of young children with disabilities. One area of intervention is that of social interaction, including social skills instruction, peer interaction strategies, and play skills. Interaction and social skill strategies for use with children with and without disabilities for the purpose of increasing social interactions between children with and without disabilities in educational settings is an area many educators of early childhood special education strive to find in an effective and easy to implement format. Several strategies from research are presented in this article. Only strategies that were demonstrated to be successful through reported research are discussed. Strategies are identified according to their ease of implementation and effectiveness.     

国外教育机器人辅助语言学习研究:认知激活与情感驱动

本文系统分析了国外教育机器人辅助语言学习的研究,发现其内容涵盖两个方面.第一是对参与者语言学习结果的认知激活,第二是侧重于对情感方面驱动作用研究.前者的研究以词汇学习为主,还包括如阅读、口语和语法等其他技能;后者关注教育机器人对学习动机的积极影响、教育机器人辅助语言学习的新颖性效应和教育机器人社会行为的复杂性.目前我国...     

Spatial density as a setting event for the social interaction of preschool children

The effects of spatial density as a setting event on the social interaction of preschool children were examined in this review. A specific interest was the potential application of this setting event to children with special needs in inclusive settings. Twelve studies were examined revealing a range of methodological and technical difficulties in the extant research. Several studies reported significant effects, but results were inconsistent and very limited research examining students with special needs is available. Several suggestions for future research are offered including conduct of studies in typical preschool settings with representative group sizes, study of children with special needs, and use of research designs that allow idiosyncratic responses to interventions to be considered. Despite considerable recent interest and research on setting events, the body of research on spatial density is dated and methodologically problematic. It is suggested that renewed interest in this class of setting events might be appropriate.     

Information perception and feedback mechanism and key techniques of multi-modality human-robot interaction for service robots

With theincreasing of the elderly population and thegrowing health care cost ,the role of service robots inaiding the disabled and the elderly is becoming i mpor-tant. Many researchers in the world have paid muchattention to healthcare robots and rehabili…     

Patterns of Social Interaction of Mainstreamed Preschool Children: Hopeful News from the Field

Much of the research on social interaction in mainstreamed settings has focused on “reverse mainstreamed” or special environments in contrast, the present study observed 600 social interactions in 19 regular preschools. Three findings emerged: a) retarded children are substantially integrated into the emotional and social life of the peer group, but not fully integrated into peer group verbal life; b) there is an inverse relationship between teachers’ initiation of social interaction with retarded children and the degree to which the latter are integrated into peer group life; and c) teachers provide retarded children with more verbal enrichment and emotional protection than these children receive from their peer group. On balance, these findings are fairly encouraging, suggesting that to a considerable extent mainstreaming is working in preschool classrooms.     

Interventions for Secondary Students with High Functioning Autism in General Education Settings: A Descriptive Review

In recent years, there has been a rise in the number of students with high functioning autism (HFA) enrolled in general education classes. Many of these students struggle with academic and social–behavioral expectations in school, and minimal research is available to educators related to meeting the needs of such students in secondary educational settings. Educators must identify effective, evidence-based strategies to help adolescent students with HFA meet academic and social goals. This review represents a comprehensive search of the literature in which 23 studies, published in peer-reviewed journals from 1985 to 2015, examined social–behavioral and academic aspects of students with HFA in regular education classrooms. Results indicated that several interventions were used successfully to change the behavior of students with HFA in general education. Implications drawn from the research and quality of the studies are provided.     

Peer relations in peer learning

Over the last decades, much research on peer learning practices has been conducted. Quantitative, experimental designs focusing on problems of cause and effect dominate. Consequently, effects on achievement are well documented, as is the influence of different conditions on the effect rate. In spite of the general acknowledgment of the importance of peer learning and a large amount of research on collective learning practices, questions regarding the quality of peer interaction, and how peer relations influence learning, are not well elaborated. This paper complements the discussion on effect focusing on the processes of interaction between peers, and relates these to theoretical perspectives on learning as fundamentally social. Inspired by meta-ethnography an integrative analysis across seven qualitative studies was accomplished. The approach enabled an investigation of peer interactions in different educational settings. The analysis elaborates on how instructional designs and students’ relational knowledge mediate interaction in peer learning. The paper further discusses the potential of approaches synthesising qualitative studies as a tool in qualitative research.