Supplementary data for the paper 'Social robots in education: A meta-analysis of learning outcomes'
doi: 10.4121/a78b6b99-3fdf-4ae0-97b0-3b618b00805e
CC BY 4.0
Previous meta-analyses have shown that social robots have a positive impact on learning. However, these analyses were often limited in scope or had problematic inclusion criteria, such as different control conditions. In this meta-analysis, we examined learning outcomes with more studies and a focus on the type of control conditions. Studies were included if they used a physical social robot for training cognitive skills. We retrieved a total of 147 studies, comprising 184 post-test effect sizes between robot and control group, and 377 pre-post effect sizes. Results from 79 studies with post-test effect sizes showed that social robots produced larger learning gains compared to no intervention (Mean d = 0.75). Additionally, participants in the robot group, on average, learned more than those in a control group with a human teacher (Mean d = 0.30), although there was considerable variability in the effect sizes, largely attributable to whether human and robot were co-teaching (M = 0.88) or whether the study involved a robot-only vs. human teacher comparison (M = -0.07). Pre-post effects are mostly greater than 0 (Mean d = 1.08), which can be explained because learning inevitably occurs with practice. A sentiment analysis using a large language model revealed that papers from outside Europe used more positive language when describing the robots. The conclusion drawn from the current meta-analysis is that the effect size does not stand on its own but is influenced by the way the robot is used and the control condition chosen.
- 2024-09-16 first online
- 2024-10-07 published, posted
Leiden University, Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science
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