Methods and materials are described for employing a human-shaped robot as a lecturer in automated remote instruction. Video segments from the stimuli of a 2 (participant substrate: VR or non-VR) × 2 (robot embodiment: copresent or screen) balanced between-participants experiment are provided. In each condition, a robot delivers the content for a lecture on the nutrition of carbohydrates. The robot uses identical speech and body movement while the same set of slides plays on an adjacent computer, thereby controlling for such factors as educational content, robot appearance and robot size. The experiment employs Aldebaran Robotics' 25-degrees-of-freedom Nao as the robot and the Oculus Rift as the immersive VR system. The lecture speech and slides were obtained with permission from a Mandarin Chinese-language online course and translated into English. The setup for different delivery modes for automated remote instruction are illustrated using a robot delivering foreign language online content. These methods support the design and evaluation of robots that perform the role of lecturer.
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