NRI: Co-Robots to Enhance Motivation and Self-efficacy in Formal STEM Education

随着人口老龄化，康复和辅助机器人变得越来越普遍。医疗保健技术正在迅速发展，变得越来越高科技，并依赖于传感器进行生物数据收集和人机交互，以增强人类的能力。不仅这个领域在变化，而且对高技能劳动力的需求也在迅速增长。通过研究人员、应用程序开发人员以及作为用户的学生和教师之间有意义的合作，该项目将为教师提供专业成长机会，加强正规的STEM教育。它将增加学校对机器人的关注，以吸引和维持学生的兴趣，并帮助他们更好地理解和准备STEM职业道路。在三年的项目周期内，来自印第安纳州和佐治亚州的至少20名独特的教师和1500多名来自不同背景的公立学校学生将直接参与该项目。它将通过采用高兴趣领域，如辅助和康复机器人，有意义的学习环境，如改善人类生活，以及通过人机交互机器人促进的动手学习，扩大代表性不足的学生（包括女性和少数民族/种族）的参与。该项目提出了一种创新的协作机器人，用于将工程设计过程整合到STEM教育中。Neu-pulator是简单和廉价的学生设计，构建和测试随时可用的轻量级和耐用的组件。其跨学科的模块化性质适应各种动手体验式学习活动，以教授核心科学和工程概念。特别是，新普拉多融合了机电一体化、计算机编程、人机界面和生物力学。这项工作旨在降低进入门槛，并使学生将协同机器人技术视为辅助技术。这项研究工作的中心焦点是确定在设计思维背景下将学生定位为协同机器人专家的潜在影响。基于设计的研究阶段将允许研究人员在项目早期试点学习经验，根据迭代反馈改进教学方法。准实验设计阶段将在对照实验中探索可测量的影响，并采用严格的评估指标和适当的统计分析，为通过国际教师协会进行潜在的扩大做准备。这个项目将有意识地让教师和公立学校的学生参与到不同的环境中。这项研究是在国际上实施的九年级课程中建立的，该课程适合学生的发展和职业决策水平，由国际技术和工程教育工作者协会STEM中心提供，每年为多达6万名学生提供服务。该项目由国家机器人计划3.0：机器人集成创新（NRI-3.0）计划和学生和教师创新技术体验（ITEST）计划资助，该计划支持建立对实践、程序元素、背景和过程的理解，有助于增加学生对科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）以及信息和通信技术（ICT）职业的知识和兴趣。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Rehabilitation and assistive robots are becoming more prevalent as the population is aging. Healthcare technologies are rapidly evolving and becoming increasingly high-tech and reliant on sensors for biological data collection and human-robot interactions to augment human capabilities. Not only is the field changing, but the demand for a highly skilled workforce is growing rapidly. Through meaningful collaboration among researchers, application developers, and students and teachers as users, this project will provide teacher professional growth opportunities that enhance formal STEM education. It will increase attention to robotics in schools to attract and sustain students' interest and help them better understand and prepare for STEM career pathways. This project will directly engage at least 20 unique teachers from the States of Indiana and Georgia and over 1500 public-school students from diverse backgrounds during the three-year project lifespan. It will broaden the participation of underrepresented students, including females and ethnic/racial minorities, by employing high-interest fields such as assistive and rehabilitation robotics, meaningful learning contexts such as improving human life, and hands-on learning facilitated with human-interactive robots.This project presents Neu-pulator, Neurally Controlled Manipulator, an innovative, collaborative robot to integrate the engineering design process in STEM education. Neu-pulator is easy and inexpensive for students to design, build, and test with readily available lightweight and durable components. Its interdisciplinary modular nature accommodates various hands-on experiential learning activities to teach core science and engineering concepts. In particular, Neu-pulator blends mechatronics, computer programming, human-machine interface, and biomechanics. This work aims to lower barriers to entry and position students to think about co-robotics as assistive technology. The central focus of this research effort is to identify the potential impacts of positioning the student as a co-roboticist in the context of design thinking. The design-based research phase will allow the researchers to pilot learning experiences early in the project, refine the pedagogical approaches based on iterative feedback. The quasi-experimental design phase will explore the measurable impacts in a controlled experiment with rigorous evaluation metrics and appropriate statistical analysis in preparation for potential scale-up through the international teacher association. This project will deliberately engage teachers and public-school students in diverse environments. The research is established in an internationally implemented 9th-grade course—appropriate for the levels of student development and career decision making—offered through the International Technology and Engineering Educators Association STEM Center, which reaches up to 60,000 students annually.This project is funded by the National Robotics Initiative 3.0: Innovations in Integration of Robotics (NRI-3.0) program, and the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program which supports projects that build understandings of practices, program elements, contexts and processes contributing to increasing students' knowledge and interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and information and communication technology (ICT) careers.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.