This article presents a program evaluation of a six-week middle school pilot program focused on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) enrichment using robotics, specifically VEX Robots™. Two key questions guided this evaluation: (a) Does exposure to robotics influence middle school dispositions about STEM and careers in STEM? and (b)…

Our goal was to examine the feasibility of applying therapeutic robotics to children and adults with severe to moderate impairment due to cerebral palsy (CP). Pilot results demonstrated significant gains for both groups. These results suggest that robot-mediated therapy may be an effective tool to ameliorate the debilitating effects of CP and…

Summer outreach programs provide pre-college participants an introduction to college life and exposure to engineering in an effort to raise the level of interest and bring more students into engineering fields. The Junior Engineering, Mathematics, and Science (JEMS) program is a project-based summer workshop in which teams of high school students…

With the evolution of the surrounding world market, engineers have to propose innovations in products and processes. Industrial innovation frequently results from an improved understanding of basic physics. In this paper, an approach to accelerate inventive preliminary design is presented. This method combines the main advantages of CBR (Case…

Despite the growing popularity of robotics competitions such as FIRST LEGO League, robotics activities are typically not found in regular K-12 classrooms. We speculate that, among other reasons, limited adoption is due to the lack of empirical evidence demonstrating the effect of robotics activities on curricular goals. This paper presents a mixed…

An evaluator studied the effectiveness of the displaced worker entry-level and the upgrade components of the electronics/robotics training program. Since the program was a pilot project with attendant trials and errors, a user-focused process of evaluation was selected. Entry-level students, administrators, the counselor, and instructors completed…