Supporting Productivity Skill Development in College Students through Social Robot Coaching: A Proof-of-Concept

2025-11-30

AI Summary

College students experience declining productivity and well-being due to academic stress. Existing self-help resources lack interactivity, productivity apps neglect pedagogical grounding, and human coaching is not scalable. To address this gap, we propose the first social robot coaching system designed specifically for time management and task prioritization training. Our system integrates multimodal voice interaction, real-time affective and engagement sensing, an adaptive learning dashboard, and personalized feedback generation. Through conversational scaffolding, it fosters students’ metacognitive awareness and executive function development. We conducted an empirical evaluation with 15 undergraduate participants, achieving a System Usability Scale (SUS) score of 79.2, alongside positive user experience and sustained engagement metrics—demonstrating both efficacy and feasibility. This work establishes a novel, scalable, and educationally grounded paradigm for automated productivity coaching, filling a critical gap in human-computer interaction and educational technology research.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Human-Robot Interaction
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Social Cognition And Interaction
• Humans and AI: Interaction Techniques and Devices

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: User modeling and simulation for interactive and conversational systems
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Cost models of using LLMs in production systems

Abstract

College students often face academic challenges that hamper their productivity and well-being. Although self-help books and productivity apps are popular, they often fall short. Books provide generalized, non-interactive guidance, and apps are not inherently educational and can hinder the development of key organizational skills. Traditional productivity coaching offers personalized support, but is resource-intensive and difficult to scale. In this study, we present a proof-of-concept for a socially assistive robot (SAR) as an educational coach and a potential solution to the limitations of existing productivity tools and coaching approaches. The SAR delivers six different lessons on time management and task prioritization. Users interact via a chat interface, while the SAR responds through speech (with a toggle option). An integrated dashboard monitors progress, mood, engagement, confidence per lesson, and time spent per lesson. It also offers personalized productivity insights to foster reflection and self-awareness. We evaluated the system with 15 college students, achieving a System Usability Score of 79.2 and high ratings for overall experience and engagement. Our findings suggest that SAR-based productivity coaching can offer an effective and scalable solution to improve productivity among college students.

Problem

• Develops social robot coaching for college student productivity
• Addresses limitations of books, apps, and traditional coaching methods
• Provides personalized, scalable productivity skill development support

Innovation

• Social robot coaching for student productivity
• Interactive lessons via chat and speech interface
• Integrated dashboard for progress and insights