Date
Publisher
arXiv
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.
Study at a glance
- Question: Can a socially assistive robot coaching system effectively support college students in developing productivity and time management skills?
- Setting and data: 15 undergraduate students aged 18–24 at a local university institute.
- Method: Usability testing and user study using post-experiment questionnaires with quantitative and qualitative feedback.
Why it matters
College students face academic challenges that harm productivity, but existing apps lack instruction, books lack personalization, and traditional coaching is difficult to scale. Socially assistive robots could offer interactive, personalized, and scalable productivity support.
Key findings
- The system achieved high usability with a System Usability Scale score of 79.2, corresponding to an "A-" grade.
- Participants rated overall experience at 4.3 out of 5 and session engagement at 4.2 out of 5, with 12 out of 15 voluntarily completing all lessons.
- A majority of participants found coaching helpful for task prioritization (73% very helpful) and time management (67% somewhat helpful). Number of participants: 15.
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