5 research outputs found
WIP: Development of a Student-Centered Personalized Learning Framework to Advance Undergraduate Robotics Education
This paper presents a work-in-progress on a learn-ing system that will
provide robotics students with a personalized learning environment. This
addresses both the scarcity of skilled robotics instructors, particularly in
community colleges and the expensive demand for training equipment. The study
of robotics at the college level represents a wide range of interests,
experiences, and aims. This project works to provide students the flexibility
to adapt their learning to their own goals and prior experience. We are
developing a system to enable robotics instruction through a web-based
interface that is compatible with less expensive hardware. Therefore, the free
distribution of teaching materials will empower educators. This project has the
potential to increase the number of robotics courses offered at both two- and
four-year schools and universities. The course materials are being designed
with small units and a hierarchical dependency tree in mind; students will be
able to customize their course of study based on the robotics skills they have
already mastered. We present an evaluation of a five module mini-course in
robotics. Students indicated that they had a positive experience with the
online content. They also scored the experience highly on relatedness, mastery,
and autonomy perspectives, demonstrating strong motivation potential for this
approach.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, conferenc
Robotics as a Means of Increasing Student Achievement in Middle School Science
This study reports on the effectiveness of a Robotics engineering curriculum in increasing the middle school students‘ achievement in science and math. Specifically, it aimed to find out if the students taking the robotics class performed significantly higher in science and math than a control group. The research examined and compared the scores in a pre and posttest and the normalized learning gains of students taking robotics in addition to their regular science and math versus those who are taking science and math only. Although this study showed that there is no significant difference in the science achievement scores of students between the experimental and control group, gender was identified an as important factor that affects the learning outcomes in a Robotics class. Further analyses also showed that despite the fact that students used general math ideas as they engage in the problem solving process during robotics-driven activities, their knowledge of math is no different from those who are not taking robotics
A robotics summer camp for high school students: pipelines activities promoting careers in engineering fields
In this paper we discuss the lived-experiences and the career interests of 27 high school students who participated in a two-week Robotics summer camp in 2012. The summer camp was designed by a team of engineering faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates. It provided the high school students with the opportunity to play and work with the materials to design a robot, build it, test it, and re-design it. A secondary purpose of the camp was to help students determine their career choice in the engineering fields. The participating 27 students were selected according to (a) their content questionnaire scores administered to 145 students in 34 different locations (b) personal interest essays, and (c) phone interviews. At the camp, the students took (a) a computer programming course, (b) a basic electronics course, and (c) proteus, pic, and microC training sessions. The students in pairs designed, built, tested, and modified their robots through practical implementations. They were given a variety of design challenges in each practical
implementation. In the camp, invited researchers presented about their research and interest in
Robotics and showed interdisciplinary perspectives of Robotics activities in the field (e.g., cardiovascular surgery). Also the students attended other extracurricular activities (e.g., a field trip to Ford Company). Study data were collected through interviews, field notes, and observations. The analysis of the qualitative data indicated that the camp increased the students’ interest in engineering and helped them determine specific engineering fields that they wish to
study in their academic career. Our observations revealed that the participating students engaged in activities with a community of engineers and gained first hand and original engineering design experience. We organized the study findings along with three dimensions: (a) Robotics summer camp as alternative to traditional learning environment in schools, (b) robotics activities as a means to nurture student interest in engineering fields and (c) robotics summer camp as venue for the students to determine specific engineering fields. Our study findings suggest offering outreach programs in practical engineering work to high school students.publisher versio
Multidisciplinary teamwork in a robotics course
Real-world systems are comprised of interdependent components creating integrated systems. These systems are developed by mul-tidisciplinary teams. The goal of this project is the development of a comprehensive undergraduate course in robotics that encom-passes various fields that are integral to robotic systems: Comput-er Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering. A main pedagogical goal of the course is to teach group dynamics and the skills necessary for interaction with people in different disciplines in multidisciplinary teams. Descrip-tions of the course and the hands-on lab assignments are presented along with course assessment