Play-Testing REMind: Evaluating an Educational Robot-Mediated Role-Play Game

A research team led by Elaheh Sanoubari has developed REMind, an innovative educational framework that merges social robotics with applied drama to tackle childhood bullying. The system, detailed in a new arXiv preprint, uses robot-mediated role-play where children first observe a bullying scenario performed by social robots. They then engage in perspective-taking exercises before actively rehearsing intervention strategies by physically puppeteering a robotic avatar to defend a virtual victim. This approach formalizes a new pedagogical method called Robot-Mediated Applied Drama (RMAD).

The team conducted a mixed-methods play-testing study with 18 children aged 9 to 10 to evaluate REMind's effectiveness. The findings, submitted for IEEE publication, indicate the experience successfully supported critical Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) goals. Children demonstrated increased self-efficacy, improved perspective-taking abilities, a better understanding of the outcomes of defending, and a broader repertoire of practical intervention strategies after interacting with the system. The results highlight the potential of using embodied, interactive robots to create safe, engaging environments for practicing complex social skills that are difficult to teach through traditional methods.