AI Teaching-Assistant Robots as Digital Communication Channels: Exploring Students’ Perceptional Changes in Invention Education

This study examined how elementary students’ perceptions changed through digital communication with an AI teaching-assistant robot in invention education. The robot, equipped with a conversational AI module, speech recognition and synthesis, and a display interface, supported roles as an interviewee, idea promoter, and moderator. Twenty-seven sixth graders from an elementary school in S City participated in a six-week program. Initially, students showed both curiosity and distrust due to delays and errors, but they also suggested improvements and gave positive feedback, engaging as active learners and co-designers. The findings highlight the robot’s potential not only as a learning tool but also as a digital communication channel, offering implications for designing communication-based learning environments.