Collaborative Research: Changing Culture in Robotics Classroom

计算和算法思维是21世纪的新基本技能。不幸的是，在美国，很少有K-12学校提供针对学习这些技能的重要课程。然而，许多学校确实开设了机器人课程。这些课程可以融入计算思维教学，但往往并非如此。这一研究项目旨在通过开发一套全面的资源来解决这一问题，这些资源旨在解决教师准备、课程内容和获取资源的问题。该项目建立在卡内基梅隆大学机器人学院和匹兹堡大学学习研究和发展中心之间长达十年的合作基础上，该中心研究了教师如何在课堂上实施机器人教育，并开发了导致显著学习收获的课程。这个项目将解决以下三个问题：1.什么类型的资源对激励和准备教师教授计算思维和让学生学习计算思维有用？2.教师在教授计算思维原理方面最困难的是什么，需要什么样的支持来解决这些弱点？3.虚拟环境能否显著增加对计算思维原理的了解？该项目将通过机器人虚拟世界(RVW)来加强传统的机器人课堂和竞赛，这将为学生接触更高阶的问题奠定基础。这些虚拟机器人看起来就像真实世界的机器人，将使用相同的工具进行编程，但没有机械故障。由于在对传统机器人进行编程时，处理传感器、机械和执行器误差会给学生收到的反馈带来显著的噪声(从而减少对计算原理的学习)，因此使用虚拟机器人将增加对机器人规划任务的学习，从而增加对计算思维原理的学习。RVW的使用将允许开发新的模型启发活动，使用新的虚拟机器人挑战，奖励创造力、抽象、算法和更高级别的编程概念来解决它们。将制定新的课程，将先进的概念纳入现有的课程材料中。课程和学习策略将在课堂上实施，遵循以计算思维原则为重点的教师专业发展。将使用详细的任务分析来评估将计算思维原则纳入RVW挑战的机会。此外，还将对日志文件进行回归分析，以确定学生在哪里遇到困难。课堂观察、对学生和教师的调查以及智商将被用来评估课程的有效性，此外还将用前后测试来确定学生的学习结果。

Computational and algorithmic thinking are new basic skills for the 21st century. Unfortunately few K-12 schools in the United States offer significant courses that address learning these skills. However many schools do offer robotics courses. These courses can incorporate computational thinking instruction but frequently do not. This research project aims to address this problem by developing a comprehensive set of resources designed to address teacher preparation, course content, and access to resources. This project builds upon a ten year collaboration between Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Academy and the University of Pittsburgh's Learning Research and Development Center that studied how teachers implement robotics education in their classrooms and developed curricula that led to significant learning gains. This project will address the following three questions:1.What kinds of resources are useful for motivating and preparing teachers to teach computational thinking and for students to learn computational thinking?2.Where do teachers struggle most in teaching computational thinking principles and what kinds of supports are needed to address these weaknesses?3.Can virtual environments be used to significantly increase access to computational thinking principles?The project will augment traditional robotics classrooms and competitions with Robot Virtual World (RVW) that will scaffold student access to higher-order problems. These virtual robots look just like real-world robots and will be programmed using identical tools but have zero mechanical error. Because dealing with sensor, mechanical, and actuator error adds significant noise to the feedback students' receive when programming traditional robots (thus decreasing the learning of computational principles), the use of virtual robots will increase the learning of robot planning tasks which increases learning of computational thinking principles. The use of RVW will allow the development of new Model-Eliciting Activities using new virtual robotics challenges that reward creativity, abstraction, algorithms, and higher level programming concepts to solve them. New curriculum will be developed for the advanced concepts to be incorporated into existing curriculum materials. The curriculum and learning strategies will be implemented in the classroom following teacher professional development focusing on computational thinking principles. The opportunities for incorporating computationally thinking principles in the RVW challenges will be assessed using detailed task analyses. Additionally regression analyses of log-files will be done to determine where students have difficulties. Observations of classrooms, surveys of students and teachers, and think-alouds will be used to assess the effectiveness of the curricula in addition to pre-and post- tests to determine student learning outcomes.