Scholarly record

CONTINUITY BETWEEN EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGIES OF LEARNING ALGORITHMICS IN THE ROBOTICS COURSE

D. Andreev

Abstract

New technologies play a key role in the development of every sphere of the modern world, especially speaking of such technologies as robotics. Robots have the potential to be the next effective add-on to traditional education. The tangibility of robots and the excitement they bring into the classroom environment is considered conducive for learning. New training tools, mainly based on the use of information technologies, have appeared in the last 20 years, and the development continues, renewing the variety of educational sets in markets. However, the actual contribution of robots in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education is not obvious; despite all the advantages of educational robotics as a tool for learning, educational robotics as pedagogical science is still only at the beginning of his career. Educational robotics is still a very promising field of study, which is reflected in the large number of conferences on robotics, seminars and courses for teachers, publications with descriptions of individual methods, all showing the opportunities provided by usage of these interactive tools. But are those opportunities realized in real classrooms to the extent desired? Courses of robotics are mainly spread in extracurricular education, they have to meet less formal requirements, they are less formalized and isolated from the main school curriculum. The questions that rise are the following. Do students learn exactly that knowledge, the assimilation of which we expect? Is it possible that the kids just come to play with a construction set, not acquiring any useful knowledge and skills? What are the cases when the usage of robots has a positive impact on the effectiveness of the course, and when they work in negative way? Studies show that in many cases the robotics course has no positive effects on the academic performance of students in computer science. Despite the fact that the students leave positive feedback about the early computer science courses based on usage of the construction sets, and were enjoyed by all classes, in the transition to the common course of computer science the attendees of robotics classes had similar performance problems compared to the students who were not attending robotics. Even if students successfully coped with the implementation of creative projects and have mastered the basics of robot control, facing with transition in the new course from one instrument to another kids mostly have to learn the basics anew. This suggests that a robotics course is not part of a single educational process. The purpose of this work is to figure out, what measures can be taken to provide a continuity of learning computer science using robotic sets.

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