The impact of robotics assisted programming education on academic success, problem solving skills and motivation

Abstract

Because of their traditional programming structures that have user-hostile interfaces and complicated syntax, programming languages education doesn't catch students' attention and most of them find programming difficult and consider it as a job that only professionals can do. In order to minimalize the difficulty and drawback and help students acquire programming skills, programming education must be supported with visual and tangible tools. In this study, effect of robotics assisted programming education on students' academic success, problem solving skills and motivation was analyzed. In the study, in which quasi-experimental design with pretest-posttest control group, one of the quantitative methods of research was used and the study was carried out on 50 students split into experimental and control groups. Robotics assisted ROBOTC programming education with LEGO ® Mindstorms EV3 was carried out with the students of experimental group and for the control group basic C programming education was given. As a result of the data obtained within the scope of the study that lasted for 8 weeks, it was found that academic success, problem solving skills and motivation of students who received robotics assisted programming education were higher than who received robotics unassisted programming education. Research Article

Research trends in programming education: A systematic review of the articles published between 2012-2020

“…Learning success, computational thinking skill, and programming ability, motivation, performance, student view, collaboration were most examined dependent variables in reviewed papers. These results match with various studies in literature (Agbo, Oyelere, Suhonen & Adewumi, 2019;Anindyaputri, Yuana & Hatta, 2020;Bati, 2021;Çam & Kıyıcı, 2022;Fagerlund, Häkkinen, Vesisenaho & Viiri, 2021;Grotta & Proda, 2019;Grover & Pea, 2013;Kalelioğlu, Gülbahar & Kukul, 2016;Lockwood & Mooney, 2018;Saqr, Ng, Oyelere & Tedre, 2021;Scaico et.al., 2018;Sol, Santos, Reis & Pereira, 2021;Shahid et.al., 2019;Tikva & Tambouris, 2021;Vihavainen, Airaksinen & Watson, 2014). However, creative thinking, problemsolving, and critical thinking skills are rarely examined as dependent variables in reviewed.…”

The Effect of Virtual Reality Assisted Robotics Coding Teaching on Spatial Visualization and Coding Skills

“…According to this finding, it can be said that the VR assisted robotic coding experiences and non-VR robotic coding experiences of the pre-service teachers create a positive increase in their coding skills. This finding is similar to the finding by Cam and Kiyici (2022) that robotic assisted programming education contributes positively to academic success. The results of the current study overlap with the results of the previous studies in the related literature.…”

Ortaokul Öğrenci̇leri̇ni̇n Roboti̇k Ve Kodlama Eği̇ti̇mi̇ Başarilarina İşbi̇rli̇kli̇ Öğrenme Tutumu, Problem Çözme Beceri̇si̇ Algisi Ve Ki̇şi̇li̇k Ti̇pleri̇ni̇n Etki̇si̇: Bi̇r Nedensel Karşilaştirma Araştirmasi

“…In the literature, it is stated that robotics and coding education contributes to the development of students' problemsolving and cooperative learning levels, increases their motivation towards science learning and motivates them to be active learners (Nourbakhsh et al, 2005;Resnick & Silverman, 2005;Chen, Quadir & Teng, 2011;Highfield, 2010;Wei et al, 2011). A glance at the literature reveals that studies in this domain mostly focus on understanding the contributions of robotics and coding education to students (Strawhacker & Bers, 2015;Çam, 2019;Sade, 2020;Abueita et al, 2022;Çam & Kıyıcı, 2022). The focus of this study, however, is to particularly examine the cooperative learning attitudes, problem-solving skills perceptions and personality traits of students who are high achievers in robotics and coding education.…”