research-article

Teaching a core CS concept through robotics

Authors:

Morderchai Ben-AriAuthors Info & Claims

ITiCSE '14: Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Innovation & technology in computer science education

Pages 315 - 320

https://doi.org/10.1145/2591708.2591714

Published: 21 June 2014 Publication History

Get Access

Abstract

We implemented single-session workshops using the Thymio-II--a small, self-contained robot designed for young students, and VPL--a graphical software development environment based upon event handling. Our goal was to investigate if the students could learn this core computer science concept while enjoying themselves in the robotics context. A visual questionnaire was developed based upon the combined Bloom and SOLO taxonomies, although it proved difficult to construct a questionnaire appropriate for young students. We found that--despite the short duration of the workshop--all but the youngest students achieved the cognitive level of Unistructural Understanding, while some students achieved higher levels of Unistructural Applying. and Multistructural Understanding and Applying.

References

[1]

T. Bell, L. Lambert, and D. Marghitu. CS Unplugged, outreach and CS kinesthetic activities. In Proceedings of the 43rd SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, SIGCSE '12, pages 676--676, 2012.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[2]

K. Bruce, A. Danyluk, and M. Thomas. Java: An Eventful Approach. Prentice Hall, 2006.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[3]

K. P. King and M. Gura, editors. Classroom Robotics: Case Stories of 21st Century Instruction for Millennial Students. Information Age Publishing, 2007.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[4]

R. Lister and J. Leaney. Introductory programming, criterion-referencing, and bloom. In Proceedings of the 34th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, SIGCSE '03, pages 143--147, 2003.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[5]

S. Magnenat, P. Rétornaz, M. Bonani, V. Longchamp, and F. Mondada. ASEBA: A Modular Architecture for Event-Based Control of Complex Robots. IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, PP(99):1--9, 2010.

Google Scholar

[6]

S. Magnenat, F. Riedo, M. Bonani, and F. Mondada. A programming workshop using the robot "Thymio II": The effect on the understanding by children. In IEEE Workshop on Advanced Robotics and its Social Impacts (ARSO), 2012.

Crossref

Google Scholar

[7]

J. H. Maloney, K. Peppler, Y. Kafai, M. Resnick, and N. Rusk. Programming by choice: Urban youth learning programming with scratch. In Proceedings of the 39th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, SIGCSE '08, pages 367--371, 2008.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[8]

O. Meerbaum-Salant, M. Armoni, and M. Ben-Ari. Learning computer science concepts with Scratch. Computer Science Education, 23(3):239--264, 2013.

Crossref

Google Scholar

[9]

F. Riedo, M. Chevalier, S. Magnenat, and F. Mondada. Thymio II, a robot that grows wiser with children. In IEEE Workshop on Advanced Robotics and its Social Impacts (ARSO), 2013.

Crossref

Google Scholar

[10]

S. H. Rodger, J. Hayes, G. Lezin, H. Qin, D. Nelson, R. Tucker, M. Lopez, S. Cooper, W. Dann, and D. Slater. Engaging middle school teachers and students with Alice in a diverse set of subjects. In Proceedings of the 40th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, SIGCSE '09, pages 271--275, 2009.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

Cited By

View all

Martin MDeneux TChevalier M(2024)From Automaton to AI Robot: the Added Value for LearningRobotics in Education10.1007/978-3-031-67059-6_35(403-410)Online publication date: 27-Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-67059-6_35
Auyelbek MYbyraimzhanov KAndasbayev EAbdykerimova ETurkmenbayev A(2022)Analysis of studies in the literature on educational roboticsJournal of Turkish Science Education10.36681/tused.2022.17419:4(1267-1290)Online publication date: 30-Dec-2022
https://doi.org/10.36681/tused.2022.174
El-Hamamsy LBruno BChessel-Lazzarotto FChevalier MRoy DZufferey JMondada F(2021)The symbiotic relationship between educational robotics and computer science in formal educationEducation and Information Technologies10.1007/s10639-021-10494-3Online publication date: 4-Apr-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-021-10494-3
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Teaching a core CS concept through robotics

Recommendations

Enhancing Robot Programming with Visual Feedback and Augmented Reality
ITiCSE '15: Proceedings of the 2015 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education

In our previous research, we showed that students using the educational robot Thymio and its visual programming environment were able to learn the important computer-science concept of event-handling. This paper extends that work by integrating ...
Evaluating the impact of educational robotics on pupils' technical- and social-skills and science related attitudes

This paper presents the design and results of an empirical study investigating the impact of educational robotics on technical skills, social skills as well as on science related attitudes and interests of pupils. The study relied on a quasi-...
Exploring Microsoft Robotics Studio as a Mechanism for Service-Oriented Robotics
LARS '10: Proceedings of the 2010 Latin American Robotics Symposium and Intelligent Robotics Meeting

When working with mobile robots, a typical task consists in developing simulated tests before going towards the real implementations. Nevertheless, this simulation stage may be very time consuming for setting-up environments and robots. Also, after ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

ITiCSE '14: Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Innovation & technology in computer science education

June 2014

378 pages

ISBN:9781450328333

DOI:10.1145/2591708

Conference Chairs:
Åsa Cajander
Uppsala University, Sweden
,
Mats Daniels
Uppsala University, Sweden
,
Program Chairs:
Tony Clear
Auckland University of Technology, NZ
,
Arnold Pears
Uppsala University, Sweden

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 21 June 2014

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Funding Sources

Swiss National Center of Competence in Research "Robotics" and "ERC"

Conference

ITICSE '14

Sponsor:

Bilkent University
SIGCSE

ITICSE '14: Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education Conference 2014

June 21 - 25, 2014

Uppsala, Sweden

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

25
Total Citations
View Citations
359
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)17
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)2

Reflects downloads up to 13 Dec 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all

Martin MDeneux TChevalier M(2024)From Automaton to AI Robot: the Added Value for LearningRobotics in Education10.1007/978-3-031-67059-6_35(403-410)Online publication date: 27-Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-67059-6_35
Auyelbek MYbyraimzhanov KAndasbayev EAbdykerimova ETurkmenbayev A(2022)Analysis of studies in the literature on educational roboticsJournal of Turkish Science Education10.36681/tused.2022.17419:4(1267-1290)Online publication date: 30-Dec-2022
https://doi.org/10.36681/tused.2022.174
El-Hamamsy LBruno BChessel-Lazzarotto FChevalier MRoy DZufferey JMondada F(2021)The symbiotic relationship between educational robotics and computer science in formal educationEducation and Information Technologies10.1007/s10639-021-10494-3Online publication date: 4-Apr-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-021-10494-3
Vega JCañas J(2019)PyBoKids: An Innovative Python-Based Educational Framework Using Real and Simulated Arduino RobotsElectronics10.3390/electronics80808998:8(899)Online publication date: 14-Aug-2019
https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics8080899
Gomez MMoresi MBenotti LScharlau BMcDermott RPears ASabin M(2019)Text-based Programming in Elementary SchoolProceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education10.1145/3304221.3319734(402-408)Online publication date: 2-Jul-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3304221.3319734
Vega JCañas J(2018)PiBot: An Open Low-Cost Robotic Platform with Camera for STEM EducationElectronics10.3390/electronics71204307:12(430)Online publication date: 12-Dec-2018
https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics7120430
Friebroon Yesharim MBen-Ari M(2018)Teaching Computer Science Concepts Through Robotics to Elementary School ChildrenInternational Journal of Computer Science Education in Schools10.21585/ijcses.v2i3.302:3Online publication date: 22-Aug-2018
https://doi.org/10.21585/ijcses.v2i3.30
Antoun SAuda JSchneegass S(2018)SlidARProceedings of the 17th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia10.1145/3282894.3289744(491-498)Online publication date: 25-Nov-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3282894.3289744
Hadfield SRaynor JSievers M(2018)Engaging Secondary and Post-Secondary Students to Learn and Explore Programming Using a Theme-Based Curriculum and the Sphero SPRK+ RobotProceedings of the 23rd Western Canadian Conference on Computing Education10.1145/3209635.3209643(1-6)Online publication date: 4-May-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3209635.3209643
Doran MClark GBarnes TGarcia DHawthorne EPérez-Quiñones M(2018)Enhancing Robotic Experiences throughout the Computing CurriculumProceedings of the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3159450.3159580(368-371)Online publication date: 21-Feb-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3159450.3159580
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Cited By

Index Terms

Recommendations

Enhancing Robot Programming with Visual Feedback and Augmented Reality

Evaluating the impact of educational robotics on pupils' technical- and social-skills and science related attitudes

Exploring Microsoft Robotics Studio as a Mechanism for Service-Oriented Robotics