Student Learning of STEM Concepts Using a Challenge-based Robotics Curriculum

Abstract

This paper examines pre-and post-student learning of science, programming, and engineering concepts using a tightly integrated robotics curriculum that challenges student teams to design, build, program, test, and redesign robots as part of a series of increasingly sophisticated design challenges. Data from over 750 middle school and high school youth from both in-school and out-of-school environments during the third year of implementation of a national scale-up project indicate that student post-test scores for the science and programming concept areas increased, but only to just above 50 percent of the total possible scores. Although a large majority of students found the curriculum highly enjoyable and felt they had learned, and teachers agreed, the degree of learning was not reflected in the assessment scores. Furthermore, although educators felt that the curriculum had helped their students learn engineering design through hands-on activities, student results did not show increases in learning of the Engineering Design Process. This suggests that more explicit instruction in science and programming content and the engineering design process may be required for deeper learning.

Experimenting with computational thinking for knowledge transfer in engineering robotics

“…Unfortunately, as far as a computational practice dimension is concerned, it is often addressed only through coding (Brackmann et al, 2017). Although programming skills have become a highly marketable asset on the job market, they are not sufficient to deduct students' ability to apply CT from a more global perspective (Mayer, 2004) and even less so to transfer CT skills to novel settings or problems (e.g., Ganesh & Thieken, 2010;McKay et al, 2015;Sánchez-Ruíz & Jamba, 2008). The current study addresses these gaps by examining a series of robotics learning activities with college students in a science programme through different methods of assessment to capture the fuller essence of concepts related to CT.…”