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The purpose of this study was to determine what collaborative interventions produce positive effects for students working on collaborative robotics projects for science process skills, collaborative problem solving, and learning motivation. In addition, the study examined the impact students' prior robotics experience had on science process skills, collaborative problem solving, and learning motivation. The results indicated experience level and collaboration interventions can have impacts on students. Assigned Group Roles had positive effects on students' motivation and collaborative problem solving. Experience level also had effects upon student learning motivation and collaborative problem solving with the Novice status associated with higher levels as compared with students who had more experience. A collaboration intervention was identified that has the potential to produce positive effects for students in collaborative robotics projects as well as assist classroom educators in the purposeful design of collaborative robotics projects with scientifically based strategies to improve the attitudinal outcomes for students of various robotics experience.

Recently educational robotics has expanded into curriculum beyond traditional STEM fields, and which can also be used to foster computational thinking (CT) skills. Prior research has shown numerous interdisciplinary benefits related to CT, however, these influential factors have often been investigated with relatively few variables. This study investigated factors that may lead to 4th and 5th grade elementary school students’ development of computational thinking skills in collaborative robotics activities by hypothesizing a model which proposed that a problem solving inventory, intrinsic motivation, and enjoyment were the main predictors of computational thinking skills. The model was then tested by surveying students with several psychometric inventories where a revised model was then constructed. The study found significant relationships between perceived competence and enjoyment, and learning motivation, and intrinsic motivation. Another important finding was that problem solving was a significant predictor of computational thinking skills. Results were interpreted with reference to implications for possible means of improving learning outcomes when using collaborative robotics in an educational setting.

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