1. DASLab Hypothesis on Robotic Gaming and STEM Interest Motivation
Mentee: Sebastian Basuki
Mentor: Allan Axelrod
Motivation
Data Collection
My work aims to analyze whether interaction with a robotic gaming system can bring a change in perception towards robotics and STEM fields among middle school aged children, while promoting interest in the use of robots for the next generation.
The survey is made up of two sections:
Likert-scale: Questions on student’s particular interests and favorite subjects at school, with only a few representative questions regarding robotics and STEM. Scored from 1 to 7.
Relative Ranking: A list of eight general areas of interests related to the Likert-scale questions that require students to rank them based on what they are most interested in.
Background
Interested in a comparative study analyzing how a gaming aspect in an experiment can increase subjects’ interest in robotics
Research Plan
Review existing survey papers about human-robot interaction to help formulate a standard for experiment
Design a human-robot interaction study by introducing a set of subjects to do a mundane task using robots in comparison to another set to do a fun game with the same robots
Analyze data gathered from survey questions and draw appropriate conclusions regarding effect of interaction with robots
*Taken from example data. Not real data.
Literature Review
Robotics as a Tool to Stem Learning
Integrate robotics into laboratory experiments in Physics courses
Data collection using interview of subjects and Survey on STEM and Career Interest, which had an increase in mean from pretest of to posttest of
Learning Programming Concepts through Programming Completion Puzzles
Use of puzzle game in study of programming language with Looking Glass
Survey on perceived competence, effort and enjoyment. See increase of learning capability by 26%.
Design of Experiment
We use Roomba robots controlled with Raspberry Pi computer. Separate students into groups doing different activities, and gauging difference in interest using a before and after survey:
Group 1: Vacuum with Roomba
Group 2: Remote Control Bumper Cars with Roomba
Next Steps
IRB not obtained, not able to perform survey
Obtain IRB, execute experiments and process data
Harms, Kyle J., Noah Rowlett, and Caitlin Kelleher. "Enabling independent learning of programming concepts through programming completion puzzles." Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), 2015 IEEE Symposium on. IEEE, 2015.
Goh, Henry, and Mohamad bin Bilal Ali. "ROBOTICS AS A TOOL TO STEM LEARNING." International Journal for Innovation Education and Research 2.10 (2016).
Weinberg, Jerry B., et al. "The impact of robot projects on girls’ attitudes toward science and engineering." Workshop on Research in Robots for Education. Vol
Acknowledgements
This work is sponsored by the PI, Dr, Girish Chowdary, through the National Science Foundation National Robotics Initiative Award Number