Collaborative Research: Changing Culture in Robotics Classroom

计算和算法思维是21世纪新的基本技能。不幸的是，美国很少有K-12学校提供关于学习这些技能的重要课程。然而，许多学校确实提供机器人课程。这些课程可以纳入计算思维教学，但往往没有。该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、课程内容和资源获取问题。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与发展中心长达十年的合作基础上，研究了教师如何在课堂上实施机器人教育，并开发了能够带来显著学习收益的课程。该项目将解决以下三个问题：1。什么样的资源对激励和准备教师教授计算思维和学生学习计算思维是有用的？教师在教授计算思维原理时最困难的地方在哪里？需要什么样的支持来解决这些弱点？虚拟环境可以用来显著增加对计算思维原理的访问吗？该项目将通过机器人虚拟世界（RVW）增强传统的机器人课堂和竞赛，帮助学生接触高阶问题。这些虚拟机器人看起来就像现实世界的机器人，将使用相同的工具进行编程，但没有机械误差。由于处理传感器、机械和执行器误差会给学生在编程传统机器人时收到的反馈增加明显的噪声（从而减少了计算原理的学习），因此使用虚拟机器人将增加机器人规划任务的学习，从而增加了计算思维原理的学习。RVW的使用将允许开发新的模型引出活动，使用新的虚拟机器人挑战，奖励创造力、抽象、算法和更高层次的编程概念来解决这些问题。将开发新的课程，将先进的概念纳入现有的课程材料。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。将计算思维原则纳入RVW挑战的机会将通过详细的任务分析进行评估。此外，将对日志文件进行回归分析，以确定学生遇到的困难。除了前后测试以确定学生的学习成果外，还将使用课堂观察、学生和教师调查以及大声思考来评估课程的有效性。

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.