The study of robotics has become a popular course among many educational programs, especially as a technical elective. A significant part of this course involves having the students learn how to program the movement of a robotic arm by controlling the velocity of its individual joint motors, a topic referred to as joint programming. They must…

With the increasing employment of robots in multiple areas such as smart manufacturing and intelligent transportation, both undergraduate and graduate students from computing related majors (e.g., computer science and information technology) demonstrated strong interests in learning robotics technology to broaden their career opportunities.…

This study examined the effects of an Arduino microrobot activity on college students' interest in robotics through three specific objectives: (1) determining how students' conceptual understanding regarding the basics of microcomputing and computer programming changes after engaging in an engineering robotics learning module, (2) assessing the…

This article describes an introductory computational thinking (CT) lesson that was implemented into five educational technology classes at a large university in the southern United States. A total of 88 undergraduate and graduate students participated in the lesson. The project was the result of a collaboration between education faculty and a…

It has been shown that deep approaches to learning, intrinsic motivation, and self-regulated learning have strong positive effects on learning. How those pedagogical theories can be integrated in computing curricula is, however, still lacking empirically grounded analyses. In a more general level, it has been widely acknowledged that in…

This paper discusses a comparative study of the effects of using a humanoid robot for introducing students to personal robotics. Even if a humanoid robot is one of the more complicated types of robots, comprehension was not an issue. The study highlighted the importance of using real hardware for teaching such complex subjects as opposed to…

If we are to attract more women and minorities to computing we must engage students at an early age. As part of its mission to increase participation of women and underrepresented minorities in computing, the Increasing Student Participation in Research Development Program (INSPIRED) conducts computing academies for high school students. The…

Contextualized learning is considered beneficial for student success. In this article, we assess the impact of context-based learning tools on student grade performance in an introductory computer science course. In particular, we investigate two central questions: (1) does the use context-based learning tools, robots and animations, affect…

Programming microworlds are being used for introducing students to programming for many years. Although many professors and school teachers report positive results from using programming microwords, these results are usually based on anecdotal evidence rather than rigorous empirical evaluation. A question that has not been answered yet with…

One of the goals of using robots in introductory programming courses is to increase motivation among learners. There have been several types of robots that have been used extensively in the classroom to teach a variety of computer science concepts. A more recently introduced robot designed to teach programming to novice students is the Institute…

Despite much public discussion about the importance of creativity and innovation-friendly teaching in Finnish higher education, the impact of the general opinion on actual teaching practices has been limited. In the Finnish computer science education the teaching mostly follows a pattern of lectures, fixed exercise sets, and exams. With this…

Project MLeXAI [Machine Learning eXperiences in Artificial Intelligence (AI)] seeks to build a set of reusable course curriculum and hands on laboratory projects for the artificial intelligence classroom. In this article, we describe two game-based projects from the second phase of project MLeXAI: Robot Defense--a simple real-time strategy game…

We have been using robots in our artificial intelligence course since fall 2000. We have been using the robots for open-laboratory projects. The projects are designed to emphasize high-level knowledge-based AI algorithms. After three offerings of the course, we paused to analyze the collected data and to see if we could answer the following…

This paper describes the design and implementation of a tool for experimenting with mobile robotics concepts, primarily for use by children and teenagers, or by the general public, without previous experience in robotics. This tool helps children learn about science in an approachable and interactive way, using scientific research principles in…

Enrollment in undergraduate computer-science programs has dipped all over the country, and among women it has almost vanished, dropping 70 percent between 2000 and 2005. Observers cite different reasons for the drop, including the dot-com bust a few years ago is one, but universities are beginning to agree on one cause that is within their…