Himanshi Lalwani

Himanshi Lalwani, Hanan Salam

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.

Keya Shah, Himanshi Lalwani, Hanan Salam

College students face well-being challenges driven by academic pressure, financial strain, and social expectations. While campus counseling and student-success programs offer support, access is often limited by stigma, waitlists, and scheduling constraints. Existing digital tools focus on emotional check-ins or chatbots and may overlook structured goal setting and aligning goals with personal values. We present GROW, a goal-centered well-being coaching system that puts values-aligned goals at the center of the student experience. GROW combines the SMART framework with principles from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in a conversational AI coach that helps students clarify aspirations, break them into concrete steps, and reflect on progress. The system links action plans with Google Calendar, sends reminders, and provides a dashboard that shows progress and engagement. We evaluated GROW through interviews with clinical psychologists, student-success staff, and faculty, followed by a one-week deployment with 30 undergraduates. Findings offer design implications for interactive systems that support engagement, accountability, and sense of purpose in higher education.