Problem Solving and Creativity: Complementing Programming Education with Robotics
Dennis Komm, Regez Adrian, Urs Hauser, Marco Gassner, Pascal Lütscher, Rico Puchegger, Tobias Kohn
Abstract
With its direct feedback and the tangible machine, robotics is a strong motivator for engaging students in STEM fields, as evidenced by the popularity of competitions and events such as FIRST and Robo Games. However, in the context of K-12 computer science education, the potential of robotics seems as yet hardly tapped into. In an attempt to bridge the gap, we designed a Python library for robotics with Lego's EV3 robots to complement programming classes. We employed our library to teach secondary school students as part of an outreach activity. Our approach is built around open-ended tasks instead of narrow exercise statements. Although our activity was based on the EV3 Space Challenge Set, we encouraged the students at any time to pursue their own ideas and even their own challenges. While students had little problems in using Python to program their robots, we still found a series of misconceptions and observed that female students were more interested in following their own creative projects than in solving given challenges.