"You've got a friend in me": Co-Designing a Peer Social Robot for Young Newcomers' Language and Cultural Learning

Fuente: arXiv
Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Hauptverfasser: Fernandes, Neil, Tang, Cheng, Shahbaz, Tehniyat, Hauschildt, Alex, Davies-Robinson, Emily, Hu, Yue, Dautenhahn, Kerstin
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
_version_ 1866911557454135296
author Fernandes, Neil
Tang, Cheng
Shahbaz, Tehniyat
Hauschildt, Alex
Davies-Robinson, Emily
Hu, Yue
Dautenhahn, Kerstin
author_facet Fernandes, Neil
Tang, Cheng
Shahbaz, Tehniyat
Hauschildt, Alex
Davies-Robinson, Emily
Hu, Yue
Dautenhahn, Kerstin
contents Community literacy programs supporting young newcomer children in Canada face limited staffing and scarce one-to-one time, which constrains personalized English and cultural learning support. This paper reports on a co-design study with United for Literacy tutors that informed Maple, a table-top, peer-like Socially Assistive Robot (SAR) designed as a practice partner within tutor-mediated sessions. From shadowing and co-design interviews, we derived newcomer-specific requirements and added them in an integrated prototype that uses short story-based activities, multi-modal scaffolding and embedded quizzes that support attention while producing tutor-actionable formative signals. We contribute system design implications for tutor-in-the-loop SARs supporting language socialization in community settings and outline directions for child-centered evaluation in authentic programs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_18804
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle "You've got a friend in me": Co-Designing a Peer Social Robot for Young Newcomers' Language and Cultural Learning
Fernandes, Neil
Tang, Cheng
Shahbaz, Tehniyat
Hauschildt, Alex
Davies-Robinson, Emily
Hu, Yue
Dautenhahn, Kerstin
Robotics
Human-Computer Interaction
Community literacy programs supporting young newcomer children in Canada face limited staffing and scarce one-to-one time, which constrains personalized English and cultural learning support. This paper reports on a co-design study with United for Literacy tutors that informed Maple, a table-top, peer-like Socially Assistive Robot (SAR) designed as a practice partner within tutor-mediated sessions. From shadowing and co-design interviews, we derived newcomer-specific requirements and added them in an integrated prototype that uses short story-based activities, multi-modal scaffolding and embedded quizzes that support attention while producing tutor-actionable formative signals. We contribute system design implications for tutor-in-the-loop SARs supporting language socialization in community settings and outline directions for child-centered evaluation in authentic programs.
title "You've got a friend in me": Co-Designing a Peer Social Robot for Young Newcomers' Language and Cultural Learning
topic Robotics
Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.18804