Moveable Alipbi: A Montessori-inspired Design of Long-Term Child-Robot Interaction for Early Literacy Development

Abstract

Children's early literacy skills tend to unfold given the specially designed environment and learning activities. In light of Kazakhstan's ongoing alphabet shift from Cyrillic to Latin, many challenges arise for early literacy development and acquisition of the new script. Human-robot interaction (HRI) research provides a unique venue for the integration of social robots into language learning, while the Montessori method with a century-long hisory offers autonomous, selfdirected, and collaborative learning space. Combining these areas, we propose a robotic system named Moveable Älıpbi, designed to help boost children's motivation in learning the new script in long-term interaction. We detail the system's interaction design life cycle from understanding users to designing and implementing robot behaviors followed by evaluating with pilot participants.