Emerging Telepresence Technologies in Hybrid Learning Houda Elmimouni helmimo@iu.edu University of Indiana, Bloomington Bloomington, USA James Marcin jpmarcin@ucdavis.edu University of California, Davis Sacramento, USA Irene Rae irenerae@google.com Google Madison, USA Environments John Paulin Hansen jpha@dtu.dk Technical University of Denmark Kongens Lyngby, Denmark Marta Orduna moc@gti.ssr.upm.es Universidad Politécnica de Madrid Madrid, Spain Janet C. Read JCRead@uclan.ac.uk University of Central Lancashire Lancashire, UK Susan C. Herring herring@indiana.edu University of Indiana, Bloomington Bloomington, USA Pablo Pérez pablo.perez@nokia-bell-labs.com Nokia Bell Labs Madrid, Spain Jennifer Rode j.rode@ucl.ac.uk University College London London, UK Selma Sabanovic selmas@indiana.edu University of Indiana, Bloomington Bloomington, USA ABSTRACT The last several years have seen a strong growth of telerobotic tech- nologies with promising implications for many areas of learning. HCI has contributed to these discussions, mainly with studies on user experiences and user interfaces of telepresence robots. How- ever, only a few telerobot studies have addressed everyday use in real-world learning environments. In the post-COVID 19 world, sociotechnical uncertainties and unforeseen challenges to learning in hybrid learning environments constitute a unique frontier where robotic and immersive technologies can mediate learning experi- ences. The aim of this workshop is to set the stage for a new wave of HCI research that accounts for and begins to develop new in- sights, concepts, and methods for use of immersive and telerobotic technologies in real-world learning environments. Participants are invited to collaboratively defne an HCI research agenda focused on robot-mediated learning in the wild, which will require exam- ining end-user engagements and questioning underlying concepts regarding telerobots for learning. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Collaborative and social computing systems and tools; Accessibility technologies. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for proft or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the frst page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the owner/author(s). CHI ’22 Extended Abstracts, April 29-May 5, 2022, New Orleans, LA, USA © 2022 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-9156-6/22/04. https://doi.org/10.1145/3491101.3503728 Verónica Ahumada-Newhart vahumada@ucdavis.edu University of California, Davis Sacramento, USA ACM Reference Format: Houda Elmimouni, John Paulin Hansen, Susan C. Herring, James Marcin, Marta Orduna, Pablo Pérez, Irene Rae, Janet C. Read, Jennifer Rode, Selma Sabanovic, and Verónica Ahumada-Newhart. 2022. Emerging Telepresence Technologies in Hybrid Learning Environments. In CHI Conference on Hu- man Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts (CHI ’22 Extended Abstracts), April 29-May 5, 2022, New Orleans, LA, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 5 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3491101.3503728 1 BACKGROUND COVID-19 has impacted all aspects of human life, and the expec- tation is that we will be managing its impact for years to come. In the spring of 2020, many educational institutions temporarily transitioned to online teaching and learning. While the pandemic made online teaching and learning a necessity, it also highlighted the need for hybrid classrooms (where some learners are physically present and others are attending virtually). There is an enthusiasm to learn from these experiences in order to broaden education and to better accommodate the needs of remote students for short or long periods of time due to medical conditions, disabilities, or other mitigating circumstances. During the pandemic, when all learners were expected to be re- mote, conventional video conferencing tools (e.g., Zoom, Microsoft Teams) were used by necessity, but they are not without limita- tions (e.g., lack of bandwidth, internet accessibility). These tools, initially designed for corporate use, are extremely useful when everyone is remote. However, we recognize that stationary on- line video-conferencing tools are not ideal for hybrid classroom discussions, group work, and design activities such as sketching and diagramming, as well as creating and manipulating physical prototypes.