The present study employed an alternating treatment design to examine the use of a socially assistive robot on the educational outcomes of children with severe symptoms of autism spectrum disorder. Participants included three children, ages 5-7 years old, recruited from a public elementary school in the Northeastern United States. The study comprised two distinct conditions. First, a pre-assessment gauged participants proficiency in life skills and science vocabulary, with the aim of selecting of target sets for the intervention. In the human condition, participants engaged in two activities guided by a human instructor, while in the robot condition, they participated in two activities led by a robot instructor. Each condition had one set of life skills vocabulary and one set of math vocabulary. And last, during post-assessment participants completed the initial vocabulary assessment and a social validity assessment to determine their preference for either the human or robot instructor. Two of the three children completed all conditions. Findings revealed that both participants successfully acquired all nine vocabulary words across both conditions. However, participants demonstrated faster mastery of the vocabulary in the human compared to the robot condition. Interestingly, despite this difference, both participants expressed a preference for the robot instructor over the human instructor. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]