The impact of robot gestures on student reasoning about geometrical conjectures

Robots are becoming an integral component of our society and robot-assisted learning has proved to be effective in promoting students’ interest and learning in STEM subjects. An underexplored area of robot-assisted learning is how the physically embodied nature of robots can be utilized to support learning through non-verbal communication, such as gesturing. In this paper, we discuss the design and development of a NAO robot that supports geometry reasoning with gestures. We evaluate two different ways for a robot to interact with college aged students (N = 30) while reasoning about geometric conjectures, and randomly assigned participants in two conditions. In the dynamic condition, the robot uses dynamic gestures that represent and manipulate geometric shapes in the conjectures. In the control conditions the robot uses beat gestures that only serve to match the rhythm of speech. We found that learners in the dynamic condition use more gestures, and more dynamic gestures, themselves and spend more time focusing their attention on the robot. These results support the use of dynamic gestures in robot-assisted learning, and suggest non-verbal communication from robots can have a positive impact on student activity.