Abstract
This paper reports on an empirical study concerning the use of LEGO Mindstorms Robotics kit as an instructional tool in technical and vocational secondary education. In particular, a robot car was developed and programmed in order to be utilized in teaching classes in the field of Mechanical Engineering. The paper describes the rationale for that construction and the robot car itself and proposes a lesson plan exploiting this technology. The pilot study that was conducted aimed at measuring the effectiveness of this approach in terms of learning outcomes as well as students’ satisfaction, enjoyment and perceived usefulness. The results of the study are encouraging towards the adoption of robotics in technical education although raising some issues that need to be further explored.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Ringwood, J.V., Monaghan, K., Maloco, J.: Teaching engineering design through Lego® Mindstorms™. European Journal of Engineering Education 30(1), 91–104 (2005)
Lawhead, P.B., Duncan, M.E., Bland, C.G., Goldweber, M., Schep, M., Barnes, D.J., Hollingsworth, R.G.: A road map for teaching introductory programming using LEGO© mindstorms robots. ACM SIGCSE Bulletin 35(2), 191–201 (2003)
Parsons, S., Sklar, E.: Teaching AI using LEGO Mindstorms. In: Greenwald, L., Dodds, Z., Howard, A., Tejada, S., Weinberg, J. (eds.) Accessible Hands-on AI and Robotics Education: Papers from the 2004 Spring Symposium, pp. 8-13. Technical Report SS-04-01. Menlo Park, California: American Association for Artificial Intelligence (2004)
Miglino, O., Lund, H., Cardaci, M.: Robotics as an Educational Tool. Journal of Interactive Learning Research 10(1), 25–47 (1999)
Rogers, C., Portsmore, M.: Bringing engineering to elementary school. Journal of STEM Education 5(3&4), 17–28 (2004)
Lindh, J., Holgersson, T.: Does lego training stimulate pupils ability to solve logical problems? Computers & Education 49(4), 1097–1111 (2007)
Ricca, B., Lulis, E., Bade, D.: Lego Mindstorms and the Growth of Critical Thinking. In: Intelligent Tutoring Systems Workshop on Teaching with Robots, Agents, and NLP (2006)
Ruiz-del-Solar, J., Avilés, R.: Robotics courses for children as a motivation tool: the Chilean experience. IEEE Transactions on Education 47(4), 474–480 (2004)
Robinson, M.: Robotics-driven activities: Can they improve middle school science learning? Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 25(1), 73–84 (2005)
Chambers, J., Carbonaro, M., Rex, M.: Scaffolding Knowledge Construction through Robotic Technology: A Middle School Case Study. Electronic Journal for the Integration of Technology in Education 6, 55–70 (2007)
Miller, G., Church, R., Trexler, M.: Teaching diverse learners using robotics. In: Druin, A., Hendler, J. (eds.) Robots for kids: Exploring new technologies for learning, pp. 165–192. Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco (2000)
Papert, S.: Mindstorms: Children, computers and powerful ideas. Basic Books, New York (1980)
Martin, F.G., Mikhak, B., Resnick, M., Silverman, B., Berg, R.: To Mindstorms and beyond: Evolution of a construction kit for magical machines. In: Druin, A., Hendler, J. (eds.) Robots for kids: Exploring new technologies for learning, pp. 10–33. Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco (2000)
Bruner, J.: The relevance of education. W.W. Norton & Company, New York (1973)
Brown, J.S., Collins, A., Duguid, P.: Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher 18(1), 32–41 (1989)
Alimisis, D., Karatrantou, A., Tachos, N.: Technical school students design and develop robotic gear-based constructions for the transmission of motion. In: Proceedings of Eurologo 2005 Conference, pp. 76–86 (2005)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Moundridou, M., Kalinoglou, A. (2008). Using LEGO Mindstorms as an Instructional Aid in Technical and Vocational Secondary Education: Experiences from an Empirical Case Study. In: Dillenbourg, P., Specht, M. (eds) Times of Convergence. Technologies Across Learning Contexts. EC-TEL 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5192. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-87605-2_35
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-87605-2_35
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-87604-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-87605-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)