TY - GEN
T1 - Unplugged Robotics to Increase K-12 Students' Engineering Interest and Attitudes
AU - Miller, Blanca
AU - Kirn, Adam
AU - Anderson, Mercedes
AU - Major, Justin C.
AU - Feil-Seifer, David
AU - Jurkiewicz, Melissa
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 IEEE.
PY - 2018/7/2
Y1 - 2018/7/2
N2 - The impact of technology on workforce development and socioeconomic prosperity has made K-12 computing engineering and STEM in general a national educational priority. However, the integration of computing remains obstructed by resources and lack of professional development to support students' learning. Further challenging is students' STEM attitudes and interest do not matriculate with them into higher education. This issue is especially critical for traditionally underrepresented and underserved populations including females, racial/ethnic minority groups, and students of low-socioeconomic status (SES). To help mitigate challenges, we developed an unplugged (computer-less) computing engineering and robotics lesson composed of two introductory computing concepts, sequencing and decision-making, using a small robot arm and tangible programming blocks. Through students' sequencing of operations, debugging, and executing complex robotic behavior, we seek to determine if students' interest or attitudes change toward engineering. Nine one-hour introductory pilot lessons with 148 students, grades 6-10, at two public middle schools, and one summer camp were conducted. We measured students' engineering interest and attitudes through a 15 question pre- and post-lesson survey and calculated aggregate factor scores for interest and attitudes. We found low-SES students' a priori interests and attitudes tend to be lower and more varied than those of their high-SES peers. These preliminary results suggest that the integration of introductory computing and robotics lessons in low-SES classrooms may help students reach similar levels of engineering interest and attitudes as their high-SES peers.
AB - The impact of technology on workforce development and socioeconomic prosperity has made K-12 computing engineering and STEM in general a national educational priority. However, the integration of computing remains obstructed by resources and lack of professional development to support students' learning. Further challenging is students' STEM attitudes and interest do not matriculate with them into higher education. This issue is especially critical for traditionally underrepresented and underserved populations including females, racial/ethnic minority groups, and students of low-socioeconomic status (SES). To help mitigate challenges, we developed an unplugged (computer-less) computing engineering and robotics lesson composed of two introductory computing concepts, sequencing and decision-making, using a small robot arm and tangible programming blocks. Through students' sequencing of operations, debugging, and executing complex robotic behavior, we seek to determine if students' interest or attitudes change toward engineering. Nine one-hour introductory pilot lessons with 148 students, grades 6-10, at two public middle schools, and one summer camp were conducted. We measured students' engineering interest and attitudes through a 15 question pre- and post-lesson survey and calculated aggregate factor scores for interest and attitudes. We found low-SES students' a priori interests and attitudes tend to be lower and more varied than those of their high-SES peers. These preliminary results suggest that the integration of introductory computing and robotics lessons in low-SES classrooms may help students reach similar levels of engineering interest and attitudes as their high-SES peers.
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U2 - 10.1109/FIE.2018.8658959
DO - 10.1109/FIE.2018.8658959
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85063431371
T3 - Proceedings - Frontiers in Education Conference, FIE
BT - Frontiers in Education
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 48th Frontiers in Education Conference, FIE 2018
Y2 - 3 October 2018 through 6 October 2018
ER -