Supporting Productivity Skill Development in College Students through Social Robot Coaching: A Proof-of-Concept

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that a social robot can effectively deliver personalized productivity coaching to college students, offering a scalable alternative to traditional methods and improving engagement and self-awareness.

Contribution

It introduces a novel social robot coaching system for productivity skill development and evaluates its usability and engagement with college students.

Findings

High system usability score of 79.2

Positive ratings for experience and engagement

Potential for scalable productivity coaching

Abstract

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.