The use of LEGO Mindstorms NXT Robots in the Teaching of Introductory Java Programming to Undergraduate Students

Gandy, Elizabeth A.; Bradley, Samuel D.; Arnold-Brookes, David; Allen, Norman R.

doi:10.11120/ital.2010.09010002

Cited by 11 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 2 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In the study of Gandy et al (2010), in order to test the basic level programming knowledge of the students who were studying in the departments of Computer, Engineering and Technology in Sunderland University, a project focusing on the use of Lego ® Mindstorms NXT was designed. At the end of the project, it was seen that programming skills of the students had improved.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Çam

Kıyıcı²

2022

Journal of Educational Technology and Online Learning

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Çam

Kıyıcı²

2022

Journal of Educational Technology and Online Learning

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…1. Even though such a block can be expressed in ROSY as a multi-stage controller that explicitly encodes a state machine and reacts differently depending on the state 4 , it is useful to lend more structure to the language as the complexity of the controller grows.…”

Section: Revisiting Block-based Languagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Various studies corroborate that robotics can indeed mitigate the abstract nature of programming [2] and provide a more creative environment for teaching programming concepts focused on hands-on problem solving [3] and for coding rich behavior using basic code structures [4], while still requiring reasoning about relevant computational concepts such as software modularity and communication [5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rosy: An elegant language to teach the pure reactive nature of robot programming

Pacheco

Macedo

2021

IJRC

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Robotics is very appealing and is long recognized as a great way to teach programming, while drawing inspiring connections to other branches of engineering and science such as maths, physics or electronics. Although this symbiotic relationship between robotics and programming is perceived as largely beneficial, educational approaches often feel the need to hide the underlying complexity of the robotic system, but as a result fail to transmit the reactive essence of robot programming to the roboticists and programmers of the future. This paper presents Rosy, a novel language for teaching novice programmers through robotics. Its functional style is both familiar with a high-school algebra background and a materialization of the inherent reactive nature of robotic programming. Working at a higher-level of abstraction also teaches valuable design principles of decomposition of robotics software into collections of interacting controllers. Despite its simplicity, Rosy is completely valid Haskell code compatible with the ROS~ecosystem. We make a convincing case for our language by demonstrating how non-trivial applications can be expressed with ease and clarity, exposing its sound functional programming foundations, and developing a web-enabled robot programming environment.

show abstract

“…Therefore, the Conferencia de Rectores de las Universidades Españolas (Spanish University Principals Conference), has initiated the elaboration of some career guides to promote the inclusion of universal design principles to each career [26], even thought they have not reached yet Computer Science Engineering. Based on the [9], the guides aim at:…”

Section: Importance Of Accessibility In Technical Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Including Universal Design in a Summer Camp Workshop on Robotics

Ribera¹,

Puertas²

2016

EDULEARN Proceedings

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this paper we will describe a summer camp short-course intended for high-school students with excellent qualifications. The course is addressed to students who are thinking on studying a technical career including a section on universal design for the first time. The department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Universitat de Barcelona will host a workshop on robotics next summer within the context of Campus Científicos de Verano by Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología.. High-school students will be selected around Spain based on their qualifications and motivation to attend the workshop. The first activity in the summer camp will be the building of Lego Mindstorms robots. These robots contain several sensors and actuators that can be programmed to do different tasks. One of the robots will be programmed to be able to track a line and another two will be programmed to do a Sumo fight on their own. Students will learn how to use sensors and actuators and code programming algorithms. For the second activity the students will develop a Mobile App with the MIT App Inventor2 software [1] in order to control the robots. In this activity students will learn how to program apps in a simple way to complete their understanding of programming. Taking into account European Higher Education Area requirements for Accessibility in technical careers, this workshop will introduce an innovation; the third activity will consist in the adaptation of the app and robots for multimodal access (including sound and sight redundant warnings) and the readjustment of the app's buttons for users with motor and visual disabilities (e.g. making the buttons bigger and with non-repeating behaviour). Students attending the summer camp will be introduced to the needs and skills of different user profiles of people with disabilities. After this theoretical introduction, they will experience motor and visual disabilities with simulations inspired by the Inclusive design Toolkit resource [2] ]. And finally, they will modify the app based on IEEE RWEP Accessible apps by Ayanna Howard [3] so to maximise the accessibility possibilities of App Inventor. Complementary resources will be made available to those students showing interest in this area, such as RWEP prosthetic hands projects, other toolkits and bibliography. This will serve as a first experience for the students and there is no prevision of including technical aids such as GRID2 or similar [4] due to budget restrictions. There are no students with disabilities registered for this year edition so the course does not seek accessibility for participants as authors. We will consider working on accessibility for participants of the following editions of this workshop, building on past experiences reaching this goal [5] [6] [7]. The main focus of the workshop is to encourage the creative learning of a robots summer camp [8], [9] with the inclusion of universal design as an essential requirement in the design and development of computer applications or systems. With this initiat...

show abstract

The use of LEGO Mindstorms NXT Robots in the Teaching of Introductory Java Programming to Undergraduate Students

Cited by 11 publications

References 2 publications

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

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

Rosy: An elegant language to teach the pure reactive nature of robot programming

Including Universal Design in a Summer Camp Workshop on Robotics

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About