Overview

We are organizing a half-day (4 hours) tutorial as part of ICRA-2008 on using personal robots as vehicles for education. Over the last year we have taught a total of 6 one semester courses of introductory computer science using personal robots as a motivational context. In this tutorial, we will introduce the participants to the hardware, software, and curriculum we have developed and utilized. This hands-on tutorial will include a mock lecture from our introductory computer science class and an open-ended robot workshop. Each participant with a laptop will have the opportunity to work with one of our robot platforms and take the the curriculum for a test drive.

Intended Audience

Computing and robotics educators at the high-school, undergraduate, and graduate levels.

Motivation and Objectives

New ways to attract and retain students is increasingly important as enrollment in computing continues to decline. Our approach uses personal robots to engage students and to act as vehicles for learning introductory computer science. In contrast with the general-purpose desktop computer, a robot offers an embodied, environmentally interactive, platform for a student to learn computing concepts such as abstraction, iteration, and conditional execution. In addition, rather than programming the robot at the on-board micro-controller level we take the "robot-as-a-peripheral" approach allowing us to exploit the power of the desktop computer as a development tool. Students aren't bogged down with the embedded programming and associated compile-download-execute-debug cycle. Instead they become proficient and confident with a modern interactive programming environments that will better prepare them for practical use in their futures. The goal of this tutorial is to familiarize the participants with our approach and tools for teaching introductory computer science with robots.

Recently, our educational robotics platforms have been used in upper-level computing and robotics classes. Although not initially targeted at robotics classes, the ease of use and low-cost of the platforms have made them attractive to a broad spectrum of education uses.

The tutorial will begin with an overview of the hardware and software platforms that we have developed for teaching CS-1 with robots. The overview will be followed by a hands-on mock lecture from our curriculum. Next, we will have some experience reports from educators who have used our platform in introductory as well as upper-level computing and robotics classes. Finally, the tutorial will conclude with an open-ended robot workshop where participants can interact with each other and their robots.

Schedule

2:00 - 3:40 pm	Disperse Class Materials A Scribbler with the IPRE Fluke A CD with the necessary software Hardware Overview (30 minutes) Software Overview (30 minutes) Mock Lecture (45 minutes)
3:40 - 4:00 pm	Coffee Break
4:00 - 6:00 pm	Using the IPRE robot in non-CS-1 contexts (30 minutes) Open Period (90 minutes)

Organizers

• Keith O'Hara - Georgia Tech
• Tucker Balch - Georgia Tech
• Jay Summet - Georgia Tech
• Mark Guzdial - Georgia Tech
• Doug Blank - Bryn Mawr College
• Deepak Kumar - Bryn Mawr College

Links

• Institute for Personal Robots in Education (IPRE)
• ICRA 2008 Workshop on Broadening Participation in Computing through Robotics and K-12 Education

Previous Events

As part of ICRA 2004 there was a workshop on educational robotics. Two workshops have been held at the Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS 2005, 2007) conference on robotics in education. There have been multiple workshops on robots and education at the AAAI Spring Symposium (2004, 2007).