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Enhancing STEM courses through a robotic innovative project

Published: 07 October 2015 Publication History

Abstract

The project addresses the urgent need to enhance student interest and performance in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses, while fostering skills that are important prerequisites for IT careers. In the near term, the project is helping Portuguese schools and students meet state wide academic standards. Over the long term, the project will help inspire and prepare a new generation of IT professionals.
This paper presents the robotics model of the Micromouse Project, how it works, how it is implemented, and its results.
The Micromouse Project includes, in addition to the annual competition, the development of a kit, workshops for students and their teachers, and dissemination activities. The project was started in 2011 and all the preliminary phases are concluded. First results show that there is great interest and participation of all stakeholders. It was necessary to add to the project a graphical language (Blockly, Scratch, etc.) in order to facilitate and stimulate the participation of younger students.

References

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M. Petre and B. Price, "Using robotics to motivate 'back door' learning," Education and Information Technologies, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 147--158, 2004. {Online}. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/B% 3AEAIT.0000027927.78380.60
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Robocup, "Robocup 2014 site," http://www.robocup2014.org/ (visited on 2015-05-15).
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Micromouse UK, "Micromouse UK contest site," http://www.tic.ac.uk/Micromouse/ (visited on 2015-05-15).
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APEC - Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition, "Micromouse USA contest site," http://www.apec-conf.org/conference/participating-in-Micromouse/ (visited on 2015-05-15).
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NTF - New Technology Foudation, "All Japan Micromouse Competition site," http://www.ntf.or.jp/mouse/ (visited on 2015-05-15).
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Institute for Technical Education, Robotic Games Society (Singapore), Nanyang Polytechnic, Nanyang Technological University, National University of Singapore, Ngee Ann Polytechnic, Republic Polytechnic, Singapore Polytechnic, Singapore Science Centre and Temasek Polytechnic., "The 21st Singapore Robotic Games 2014 site," http://guppy.mpe.nus.edu.sg/srg/ (visited on 2015-05-15).
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Ministery of Education - Taiwan, "Taiwan Micromouse and Intelligent Robot Contest site," http://robot.lhu.edu.tw/ (visited on 2015-05-15).
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MPC, "Micromouse Portuguese Contest site," http://www.micromouse.utad.pt/ (visited on 2015-05-15).
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S. Mishra and P. Bande, "Maze solving algorithms for micro mouse," in Proceedings of the 2008 IEEE International Conference on Signal Image Technology and Internet Based Systems, ser. SITIS '08. Washington, DC, USA: IEEE Computer Society, 2008, pp. 86--93. {Online}. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/SITIS.2008.104
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Bellman, Richard (1958). "On a routing problem". Quarterly of Applied Mathematics 16: 87--90. MR 0102435.
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SPR, "Sociedade Portuguesa de Robtica," http://www.sprobotica.pt/ (visited on 2015-05-15).
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  • (2025)Developing Interest, Skills and Professional Dispositions in Computing and Engineering through a Multidisciplinary Enrichment Program for High School StudentsProceedings of the 56th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3641554.3701947(617-623)Online publication date: 12-Feb-2025

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TEEM '15: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality
October 2015
674 pages
ISBN:9781450334426
DOI:10.1145/2808580
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

  • University of Salamanca: University of Salamanca
  • CIETI: Center for Innovation in Engineering and Industrial Technology
  • GRIAL: Research GRoup on InterAction and eLearning
  • ISEP: Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 07 October 2015

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Author Tags

  1. STEM
  2. algorithms
  3. contest
  4. education
  5. experimentation and programming languages
  6. micromouse
  7. robotics

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TEEM '15
Sponsor:
  • University of Salamanca
  • CIETI
  • GRIAL
  • ISEP

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  • (2025)Developing Interest, Skills and Professional Dispositions in Computing and Engineering through a Multidisciplinary Enrichment Program for High School StudentsProceedings of the 56th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3641554.3701947(617-623)Online publication date: 12-Feb-2025

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