Motivating Students' Self-study with Goal Reminder and Emotional Support

TL;DR

This study investigates whether an embodied social robot can support college students' self-study by delivering task-focused goal reminders or positive emotional support, compared with a control robot that merely provides presence. Through an exploratory Wizard-of-Oz, between-subject experiment (N=74 analyzed) across three conditions, the authors measure perceived ease of use, willingness to reuse, engagement, and goal attainment using self-report scales, behavioral annotations, and qualitative interviews. Findings show that both goal reminders and emotional support improve ease of use and help re-focus when participants are distracted, with the emotional-support condition also enhancing the perception of the robot as a social partner and predicting higher goal achievement; the goal-reminder condition emphasizes accountability and peer-like motivation. The results suggest that socially assistive robots can support self-study through complementary functional and socio-emotional engagements, and design guidelines should favor adaptable, student-tailored interventions that leverage both accountability and companionship to improve motivation and performance in self-regulated learning.

Abstract

While the efficacy of social robots in supporting people in learning tasks has been extensively investigated, their potential impact in assisting students in self-studying contexts has not been investigated much. This study explores how a social robot can act as a peer study companion for college students during self-study tasks by delivering task-oriented goal reminder and positive emotional support. We conducted an exploratory Wizard-of-Oz study to explore how these robotic support behaviors impacted students' perceived focus, productivity, and engagement in comparison to a robot that only provided physical presence (control). Our study results suggest that participants in the goal reminder and the emotional support conditions reported greater ease of use, with the goal reminder condition additionally showing a higher willingness to use the robot in future study sessions. Participants' satisfaction with the robot was correlated with their perception of the robot as a social other, and this perception was found to be a predictor for their level of goal achievement in the self-study task. These findings highlight the potential of socially assistive robots to support self-study through both functional and emotional engagement.

Figures (5)

• Figure 1: Participants were randomized into one of the three experimental conditions. In the control condition, the robot answered questions from students without initiating any intervention during the study session. In the goal reminder condition, the robot reminded the participant of their self-study goal when they looked distracted or not focused. In the emotional support condition, the robot provided encouraging and positive words to motivate the participant to stay focused and to keep working on the self-study task.
• Figure 2: The robot and the participant engaged in self-studies for two hours.
• Figure 3: Participants completed a quick picture-based evaluation of the robot's motivational interventions.
• Figure 4: Participants in the goal reminder and the emotional support conditions reported higher ease of use for our study companion robot than participants in the control condition.
• Figure 5: Participants who over-achieved their self-study goals were more satisfied with the robot intervention than participants who under-achieved their goals.