Emily Davies-Robinson

Neil Fernandes, Tehniyat Shahbaz, Emily Davies-Robinson et al.

Newcomer children face barriers in acquiring the host country's language and literacy programs are often constrained by limited staffing, mixed-proficiency cohorts, and short contact time. While Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) show promise in education, their use in these socio-emotionally sensitive settings remains underexplored. This research presents a co-design study with program tutors and coordinators, to explore the design space for a social robot, Maple. We contribute (1) a domain summary outlining four recurring challenges, (2) a discussion on cultural orientation and community belonging with robots, (3) an expert-grounded discussion of the perceived role of an SAR in cultural and language learning, and (4) preliminary design guidelines for integrating an SAR into a classroom. These expert-grounded insights lay the foundation for iterative design and evaluation with newcomer children and their families.

Neil Fernandes, Cheng Tang, Tehniyat Shahbaz et al.

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 (speech, facial feedback, gesture), 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.