The phenomena of in-group favoritism and out-group discrimination arise as early as preschool age. Living in increasingly diverse societies, it is therefore important to research these behaviors with children of that age. However, there exists no widely applicable tool that allows to measure in-group out-group bias in young children.

Learning to read can be difficult, but is a crucial skill that is needed for the whole lifespan. Deficiencies in reading capabilities can often be traced back to the initial attempts to learn reading during primary school. While there exist a number of analogue and digital tools to support reading acquisition for primary school children, they often don't account for their heterogeneity. This paper presents work in progress on integrating an adaptive pedagogical agent in a mobile reading app designed for second graders with reading difficulties. We apply Reinforcement Learning to adapt the feedback behavior of the agent to each child's learning needs and elaborate on our methodological approach. With it, we contribute a novel concept for adapting a pedagogical agent's feedback behavior within the critical context of reading development.

Social robots are applied in several fields such as education and entertainment. Using the method of storytelling, these two fields can be combined to allow for informal learning. As social robots can benefit students' motivation and learning process and storytelling is a consolidated method for vocabulary acquisition, integrating learning content into a robotic storyteller's narration might facilitate implicit learning. Focusing on language learning, we conducted an online study to compare a robotic storyteller for vocabulary learning to traditional media, e.g. text. Results show that a robotic storyteller is as effective as traditional media concerning long-term memory. While it is also perceived equally useful, participants were more satisfied when reading text. No differences were indicated for transportation into the story. This preliminary online study indicates the suitability of robotic storytelling for implicit language learning, however, future studies should examine live and co-located scenarios to investigate their full potential.

Separating and recycling waste is an important topic to protect our environment and achieve a more sustainable future. However, recycling also is a complex process, as each type of waste needs a specific recycling method. This comes along with multiple recycling containers, each relevant for one specific type of waste. Ensuring a correct recycling process therefore not only requires specific infrastructure, but also a respective attitude and knowledge of the population. Stressing the need for an accessible educational opportunity addressing waste separation, we present a mobile Augmented Reality (AR) application that guides a user through a recycling process and hence scaffolds the learning of proper recycling of each type of waste. The app further provides a prototypical implementation of a product scanner, that identifies the waste type based on a marker and assists the recycling on a case-by-case decision. Using self-determination theory as a framework, we integrated gamification elements, aiming for enhanced need satisfaction, motivation and user experience. In a user study, we compared the gamified version to a control version, with both app versions yielding a high acceptance, user experience, and waste separation behavior. This indicates the importance of providing easy-to-use mobile apps allowing for a learning and assistance of proper recycling.

Abstract Reading is an essential ability and a cornerstone of education. However, learning to read can be challenging for children. To scaffold young learners, a number of reading interventions were developed, including a syllable-based approach in German, which has proven to be successful, but resource and time consuming through individual interaction by educators. To improve the reach of the reading intervention, we present the first step towards a digital intervention, following an iterative design approach. In this contribution, we present the implementation of a digital prototype, developed with the feedback of expert evaluations, as well as an interview study with second graders. The results of interviews with children showed that the app is suitable to be applied in the target age group, that children had fun using it and were motivated to further do so. In a next step towards a meaningful digitalization of the analogue intervention, we extended the application based on the evaluation results and conducted a usability evaluation of the extended app. The study as well as the usability evaluation provides design implications for iteratively transferring the analogue concept into a digital application.