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Computer Science Outreach with End-User Robot-Programming Tools

Published: 08 March 2017 Publication History

Abstract

Robots are becoming popular in Computer Science outreach to K-12 students. Easy-to-program toy robots already exist as commercial educational products. These toys take advantage of the increased interest and engagement resulting from the ability to write code that makes a robot physically move. However, toy robots do not demonstrate the potential of robots to carry out useful everyday tasks. On the other hand, functional robots are often difficult to program even for professional software developers or roboticists. In this work, we apply end-user programming tools for functional robots to the Computer Science outreach context. This experience report describes two offerings of a week-long introductory workshop in which students with various disabilities learned to program a Clearpath Turtlebot, capable of delivering items, interacting with people via touchscreen, and autonomously navigating its environment. We found that the robot and the end-user programming tool that we developed in previous work were successful in provoking interest in Computer Science among both groups of students and in establishing confidence among students that programming is both accessible and interesting. We present key observations from the workshops, lessons learned, and suggestions for readers interested in employing a similar approach.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    SIGCSE '17: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
    March 2017
    838 pages
    ISBN:9781450346986
    DOI:10.1145/3017680
    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 the author(s) 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].

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    Published: 08 March 2017

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    Author Tags

    1. accessibility
    2. end-user programming
    3. outreach
    4. robotics

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    SIGCSE '17 Paper Acceptance Rate 105 of 348 submissions, 30%;
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    View all
    • (2024)Programming Smart Objects: How Young Learners’ Programming Skills, Attitudes, and Perception Are InfluencedProceedings of the 2024 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on SPLASH-E10.1145/3689493.3689982(45-55)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2024
    • (2023)Kinesthetic Trajectory Learning of a Collaborative Robot UR 10e with APLC S7-1500New Technologies, Development and Application VI10.1007/978-3-031-31066-9_2(19-26)Online publication date: 20-May-2023
    • (2022)What do We Know about Computing Education for K-12 in Non-formal Settings? A Systematic Literature Review of Recent ResearchProceedings of the 2022 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research - Volume 110.1145/3501385.3543960(264-281)Online publication date: 3-Aug-2022
    • (2021)Measuring Student Confidence from Tech Camp ParticipationProceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3408877.3439580(1324-1324)Online publication date: 3-Mar-2021
    • (2021)How a Remote Video Game Coding Camp Improved Autistic College Students' Self-Efficacy in CommunicationProceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3408877.3432516(142-148)Online publication date: 3-Mar-2021
    • (2021)Designing user-centric programming aids for kinesthetic teaching of collaborative robotsRobotics and Autonomous Systems10.1016/j.robot.2021.103845145:COnline publication date: 1-Nov-2021
    • (2021)NNBlocks: a Blockly framework for AI computingThe Journal of Supercomputing10.1007/s11227-021-03631-9Online publication date: 25-Jan-2021
    • (2020)Impacts of Creating Smart Everyday Objects on Young Female Students' Programming Skills and AttitudesProceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3328778.3366841(1234-1240)Online publication date: 26-Feb-2020
    • (2020)A Longitudinal Analysis of K-12 Computing Education Research in the United StatesProceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3328778.3366809(605-611)Online publication date: 26-Feb-2020
    • (2020)Situated Learning-Based Robotics Education2020 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE44824.2020.9274168(1-3)Online publication date: 21-Oct-2020
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