A Robotics Course during COVID-19: Lessons Learned and Best Practices for Online Teaching beyond the Pandemic

Abstract

The article describes observations from the online teaching of a robotics class during the COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2, also known as the coronavirus. The changes in the course structure and in the provided material lead to an unexpected increase in the grade performance of the students. The article provides a description and an analysis of the effects and their possible causes. In addition to a grade-performance analysis, further data from a university-wide and from a course-specific survey are used. The analysis of the effects and their possible causes is furthermore discussed in relation to the educational research literature. Some evidence for the general findings is provided, which are of interest for online teaching or blended learning in general, respectively, for teaching in robotics and related areas. These include some evidence for the benefits of asynchronous online teaching and for the role of social interaction, which may happen in self-organized, smaller peer groups, even without the intervention of the instructor. The findings and the extensive pointers to the literature can also provide useful guidelines for instructors of robotics courses when considering the use of online or blended teaching in the future beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

Transitioning to Online Teaching During the COVID-19 Pandemic: an Exploration of STEM Teachers’ Views, Successes, and Challenges

“…Online digital resources can enrich the classrooms and improve student learning (Recker et al, 2013 ), as they provide high-quality and collaborative online learning experiences both synchronously and asynchronously (Hoffman, 2018 ; Selvaraj et al, 2021 ). The flexibility provided by asynchronous online teaching modules specifically, and the video format utilized in teaching were shown to positively impact student achievement in a university robotics course (Birk et al, 2020 ). Thus, digital tools aimed at helping students construct their knowledge within real-world circumstances and create learning communities in which students interact, discuss, and share with other students, can provide benefits over synchronous online teaching.…”

Satisfaction Levels of Sport Sciences University Students in Online Workshops for Substituting Practice-Oriented Activities during the COVID-19 Lockdown

“…The large body of survey-based literature produced during the pandemic showed the feasibility of this transformation both in terms of student's perception and performance in various disciplines and countries [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. While face-to-face lectures have been substantially turned into synchronous (i.e., live) and asynchronous (i.e., streamed) videoconferences, the problem arose for those courses characterized by practice-oriented activities that require teacher-student interaction and the use of laboratory tools [15].…”

Experience with Abrupt Transition to Remote Teaching of Embedded Systems

“…A close relative to teaching embedded systems is teaching robotics, often also interacting with real hardware. Nevertheless, the reader has to keep in mind that robotics courses tend to focus on more high-level concepts and the requirements for contact with hardware are less strict [3,9].…”

“…When comparing to teaching robotics, there is a significant difference of focus: Robotics courses tend to focus on high-level algorithms and control, while courses on embedded systems often concentrate on the low-level details of hardware control [3,9]. For example, it is reasonable in robotics that students will understand algorithms like A* from programming a virtual mouse in a virtual labyrinth.…”