Impression Effect of Educational Support Robots that Facilitating Improvement in the Number of Problems Based on Politeness Theory

Abstract

In recent years, educational support robots have attracted much attention. In conventional robots, the number of problems to be solved by the learner is fixed, and the learner cannot set the number of problems himself, resulting in an active learning environment. On the other hand, to motivate learners to learn and achieve higher learning effects, it is important to encourage spontaneous learning in which learners can set the number of problems themselves. Therefore, this study proposes the Problem Number Negotiation Method, in which the robot negotiates the number of problems while conversing with the learner by a robot based on politeness theory. This paper investigates the impression that the robot equipped with proposed method gives to junior high school students and the average number of solved problems, comparing it with a conventional robot. The experimental results show that the average number of solved problems by junior high school students improves when learning with the proposed robot.