Play-Testing REMind: Evaluating an Educational Robot-Mediated Role-Play Game

Abstract

This paper presents REMind, an innovative educational robot-mediated role-play game designed to support anti-bullying bystander intervention among children. REMind invites players to observe a bullying scenario enacted by social robots, reflect on the perspectives of the characters, and rehearse defending strategies by puppeteering a robotic avatar. We evaluated REMind through a mixed-methods play-testing study with 18 children aged 9--10. The findings suggest that the experience supported key learning goals related to self-efficacy, perspective-taking, understanding outcomes of defending, and intervention strategies. These results highlight the promise of Robot-Mediated Applied Drama (RMAD) as a novel pedagogical framework to support Social-Emotional Learning.

Figures (7)

• Figure 3: REMind engages players in role-playing with three social robots to practice anti-bullying bystander intervention.
• Figure 4: Three Robot Characters in REMind.
• Figure 5: Experiment room layout.
• Figure 6: Self-efficacy for defending increased post-intervention. Boxes show the interquartile range (IQR); whiskers extend to 1.5× IQR.
• Figure 7: Post-test responses reflected more accurate expectations about defending outcomes. Red and blue lines mark bully- and victim-related targets, respectively.