Our experiences incorporating robotics into our service course: poster session

A number of colleges and universities are using robots as a focus in introductory computer science courses to try to stimulate students' interest in computer science. Several colleges have integrated robots into their CS1 courses or even built an entire course around robots [1, 2, 3, 4]. Other colleges have integrated robots into CS0 courses [5, 6]. In this poster, we present the experiences we had when incorporating robotics into our service course, which is designed to be neither a CS0 nor a CS1 course. Our course, Introduction to Information Technology, aims to introduce students to the concepts in information technology and their uses in the workplace. Because of breadth of this subject, we are only able to devote 1--1.5 weeks to any particular topic, including introducing students to computer programming. The course is almost entirely populated by students who will not major in computer science, although on rare occasions, a student taking this course will continue on to CS1 and the computer science major. Previously, we introduced programming with Scratch and also had students play a game called LightBot, which requires students to "program" a virtual robot to light up tiles [7, 8]. Many of the students had a lot of success with LightBot and enjoyed it. Conversely, a large portion of the students did not appear to be engaged with Scratch. This year, following the success of using LightBot, we considered alternate methods to introduce programming and chose to use robots in the course to introduce students to computer programming. We used the Scribbler robots from Parallax, Inc. in three of our four sections of Introduction to Information Technology this fall [9]. The Scribbler robot comes with a graphical programming environment that can be used by students instead of using the Basic Stamp editor that also comes with the robot. Students were taught how to use the graphical programming environment to make the Scribblers move, make decisions using if/else statements, repeat tasks with a while loop, and detect obstacles using the robot's sensors. The students were encouraged to play with the robots for the 50 minute class period to get comfortable with them. They were told that during the following class, which was 100 minutes, their assignment would be to program the robots to navigate a simple U-shaped maze. The students were told that their robot should be able to be placed at either entrance of a maze by the professor and be able to enter the maze and exit out the other side. We had mixed results and encountered several unexpected challenges when conducting the lab. The success rate of the students was low and few students were able to complete the exercise the way we had hoped they would. This may have been due to some of the many problems we encountered while conducting this lab. However, the reason for changing the vehicle for introducing programming was to try to engage more students and a greater proportion of the students appeared to be engaged in trying to make the robot traverse the maze than had been engaged by Scratch last year. We also noticed that several students who had not seemed to be particularly engaged during the course were working hard on the lab and appeared to be enjoying themselves. Given that we were primarily looking to engage the students more successfully than last year, the lab may have worked better than the success rate indicated.