Robotics

Robotics course materials

Why do students choose to study Information and Communications Technology?

Abstract It is a worldwide problem that although many students are highly interested in Information and Communications Technology (ICT), they do not study it at the higher education level, or if they do then many of them eventually dropout. We studied the reasons student candidates choose to study ICT, in order to gather data that can be used for improving future ICT recruitment and retention. During the admissions procedure to three higher education institutions in Estonia, 1,464 student candidates were asked what reasons influenced them to apply to Informatics or Information Technology. On average, 2.6 candidates competed per available position at the institutions. Qualitative content analysis was used to code the candidates' open-ended answers and resulted inductively in 14 distinguishable categories. The most frequent reasons for studying ICT were general interest in ICT, previous experience in the field, need for personal professional development, and importance of the field in the future. Interestingly, only a few candidates expressed as a reason the importance of high salaries. Chi-square analysis showed that candidates were accepted with higher probability if they found ICT to be suitable for them, or expressed good opportunities in the labour market. These results are useful for planning effective admission procedures to recruit ICT students

Does Inquiry-based Education Using Robots Have an Effect on Learners’ Inquiry Skills, Subject Knowledge and Skills, and Motivation?

Robots have been applied in science education for a long time. Inquiry-based learning, as a student-centred method to discover different relations, has been considered as an effective learning approach in science education and robots are often used to apply student-guided inquiry. It is, however, not clear what the effect of inquiry-based scenarios is in learning science when students’ motivation and novelty effect are taken into account. In our study, we tested seven inquiry-based scenarios in secondary school physics with a sample of 47 students in the experiment classes and 41 in the control classes. Results revealed that the inquire-based scenarios improved students’ inquiry skills and subject knowledge and skills in the case of the experiment classes and also in the case of the control classes. Study motivation did not improve in the study, explained by the fact that the schools have used robots previously in learning and the novelty effect has faded out. Based on our discussion, the use of robots in education needs to focus more on supporting students’ thinking activities and on increasing their awareness about their own skills and learning process. Further studies are needed to understand in-depth how teachers’ activities in the classroom might have an effect on the usability of robots in education and how students’ thinking and awareness of the learning process could be improved in order to have a stronger effect on learning outcomes as well