EAGER: Multi-Modal Communication for Teachable Robots

同伴辅导，即一个学生向另一个学生讲授材料，已被证明可以提高学习效果，特别是对承担教师角色的学生而言。这是因为发现和纠正错误往往需要学生教师反思自己的知识来发展解释，加强他们对主题的知识。然而，这种同伴辅导的有效性取决于学习者的行为——如果他们太快地掌握了一门学科，学生教师可能受益较少；如果他们学得太慢，老师可能会感到沮丧或困惑。另一种选择是让学习者假装不知道该主题，并通过“反向引导”来帮助指导老师——问正确的问题，偶尔犯“错误”等等。为此，本研究的目标是开发一种社交机器人，它扮演学习者的角色，指导学生教师使用语言和非语言行为，模拟学生的认知和情感状态，并提供反馈和鼓励。该项目的重点是为社交机器人开发多模式通信，为试图教机器人多步骤数学问题解决的学生提供认知和情感支持。学生和机器人围绕一个“智能”白板协作，形成共同的学习焦点。运用心理理论的概念，从学生的多模态行为中推断学生的情感状态，并提供支持和鼓励，目的是促进学生坚持任务，发展元认知技能，从而更有效地进行教学。来自共同基础理论的概念被用于生成机器人动作，例如提问或故意犯错误，以帮助指导学生教师通过交互式演示/接受过程更好地解释概念。作为该项目的一部分，正在开发一个机器人大使，可以向中学生解释机器人和STEM。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Peer tutoring, in which one student teaches material to another student, has been proven to increase learning, especially for the student who is taking on the role of teacher. This is because detecting and correcting mistakes often requires the student teacher to reflect on their own knowledge to develop explanations, reinforcing their knowledge of the subject matter. The effectiveness of such peer tutoring, however, depends on how learners behave -- if they pick up the subject too quickly, the student teacher may benefit less; if they pick it up too slowly, the teacher may get frustrated or confused themselves. An alternative is to have the learner pretend not to know the subject and help guide the teacher by "back leading" -- asking the right questions, making occasional "mistakes", etc. To this end, the goal of this research is to develop a social robot that plays the role of learner, guiding the student teacher using both verbal and non-verbal behaviors, modeling both the cognitive and emotional state of the student, and providing feedback and encouragement.The project focuses on developing multi-modal communication for a social robot that provides cognitive and emotional support of students who are trying to teach the robot multi-step mathematical problem solving. The student and robot collaborate around a "smart" whiteboard that forms the joint focal point for learning. Concepts from Theory of Mind are used to infer the affective state of the student from their multi-modal behaviors and to provide support and encouragement, with the goal of facilitating the student persevering in the task and developing meta-cognitive skills to teach more effectively. Concepts from Common Ground Theory are used to generate robot actions, such as asking questions or making deliberate mistakes, to help guide the student teacher to better explain the concept, through an interactive presentation/acceptance process. As part of this project, a robot ambassador is being developed that can explain robotics and STEM to middle-school students.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.