cs.ROMar 19, 2026

"You've got a friend in me": Co-Designing a Peer Social Robot for Young Newcomers' Language and Cultural Learning

Authors: Neil Fernandes, Cheng Tang, Tehniyat Shahbaz, Alex Hauschildt, Emily Davies-Robinson, Yue Hu, Kerstin Dautenhahn

Organizations: University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada · United for Literacy, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

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Abstract

Community literacy programs supporting young newcomer children in Canada face limited staffing and scarce one-to-one time, which constrains personalized English and cultural learning support. This paper reports on a co-design study with United for Literacy tutors that informed Maple, a table-top, peer-like Socially Assistive Robot (SAR) designed as a practice partner within tutor-mediated sessions. From shadowing and co-design interviews, we derived newcomer-specific requirements and added them in an integrated prototype that uses short story-based activities, multi-modal scaffolding and embedded quizzes that support attention while producing tutor-actionable formative signals. We contribute system design implications for tutor-in-the-loop SARs supporting language socialization in community settings and outline directions for child-centered evaluation in authentic programs.

Figures & tables

Fig. 1 : The Maple robot prototype [ 6 ] (Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).
Fig. 2 : System Architecture of the Maple robotic system and robot prototype.
Fig. 3 : Timeline of our co-design process with L2 and HRI experts, structured around Design Thinking: I (Empathize): This stage included Shadowing Sessions and Observational Analysis. II (Define): Stage included Transcript analysis, synthesis of challenges, and identification of user needs. III (Ideate): Included robot role definition, generation of design guidelines, and co-design of story based lesson activities. IV (Prototype): Included implementation and iterative refinement of the interactive system. V (Test): Included (and will include) empirical evaluation through tutor playtesting, interviews, and child case studies.
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