Social Robots as Personalized Learning Companions for Early Childhood Learning

This project, supported by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, is designed to develop new learning games focused on improving children’s vocabulary and early literacy skills. Early language and literacy skills are important foundations for learning and form the basis of later academic success. Motivated by a growing scientific consensus that successful language learning requires engaging students cognitively, affectively, and socially, we are developing, deploying, and evaluating social robot learning companions that help children practice and master early language and literacy skills by engaging with, understanding, and adapting to students to provide scalable, personalized, interactive digital learning systems.