Abstract

The application of social robots to the domain of education is becoming more prevalent. However, there re- main a wide range of open issues, such as the effectiveness of robots as tutors on student learning outcomes, the role of social behaviour in teaching interactions, and how the em- bodiment of a robot influences the interaction. In this paper, we seek to explore children’s behaviour towards a robot tutor for children in a novel guided discovery learning interac- tion. Since the necessity of real robots (as opposed to virtual agents) in education has not been definitively established in the literature, the effect of robot embodiment is assessed. The results demonstrate that children overcome strong incorrect biases in the material to be learned, but with no significant dif- ferences between embodiment conditions. However, the data do suggest that the use of real robots carries an advantage in terms of social presence that could provide educational benefits