Generation NXT

Generation NXT

Richard Gale and Tanja Karp, Department of Electrical and Computer EngineeringLaura Lowe and Vickie Medina,Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work Texas Tech UniversityLubbock, TX 79409-3102, USA,richard.gale@ttu.edu, tanja.karp@ttu.edu, laura.lowe@ttu.edu, vickie.medina@ttu.edu

ABSTRACTWe describe the initiation of a robotics based engineering outreach program geared toward elementary school and middle school students. Students playfully learn engineering concepts such as brainstorming, designing, building, testing, trouble shouting, repeatability, and improving their design using the programmable LEGO Mindstorms NXT kits. They test their design in competitions between different teams from a school and teams from different schools. We offer paid mentor positions to Electrical and Computer Engineering and Mechanical Engineering freshman students to help the school teams. We also provide opportunities for teacher training to elementary and middle school teachers and provide them with the necessary kits and hardware.We also offer similar courses through Texas Tech University in form of Super Saturdays (students spend 4 Saturday mornings on Campus) or residential summer camps as well as through a local community center. In this way, students who were exposed to LEGO robotics at school can continue this activity during their spare time.

IntroductionDuring the last decade, Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) departments have not only seen a decline in enrollment, but also an increasing number of ill- prepared students who neither had the required pre-requisites from their high school courses, nor knew much about their major1,2,3. In addition, Lubbock, Texas, where Texas Tech University is located, does not offer many technical industry employment opportunities. Thus very few local students know about electrical and computer engineering through their family members and their profession. Lubbock itself has a population of 200,000 and is the largest city within a radius of about 400 miles4. The Electrical and Computer Engineering Department has 24 full time faculty and an annual enrollment of 100 150 freshmen.

To meet the demands of the future job market, one cannot simply continue to weed out weak and ill-prepared students and live with retention rates around or even below 40%, pretending that only the best students are worth the effort5. To overcome the future lack of qualified domestic electrical and computer engineers, the Texas Legislature passed the Technology Workforce Development Act in 2001 with the aim xto provide seed money that would enable institutions to expand enrollments inengineering and computer science programs,

978-1-4244-1916-6/07/$25.00 2007 IEEE1xto increase both the quantity and quality of baccalaureate-level engineers and computer scientists,xto foster cooperative relationships and activities involving technology companies and universities that offer engineering and computer science degrees.6.Since then, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) has launched four Texas Workforce Development (TWD) Grant Programs, with the latest one from 2006 focusing on the age group of 14 21 years.

In a time where choices are manifold and children are eager to try all different kinds of activities, we need to engage them as early as possible in engineering related problem statements through exciting challenges. Just exposing them to engineering designs and tasks at high school level through tours and fairs, does not overcome their lack of motivation to study science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). LEGO building blocks, however, have caught childrens, teen-agers and adults attention over the last 30 years and kept them engaged for long periods of time, thus providing an ideal tool not only to catch students interest but also to keep them excited about what they are doing and motivated to put effort into their work and acquire the necessary skills that allow them to improve it.

With its Mindstorms kits, LEGO added programmability in form of block based modules to its product line. The NXT kits7, which were introduced in 2006, consist of a programmable brick, the so-called brain, to which up to 3 motors and 4 sensors can be connected. The kit comes with a sound sensor, a touch sensor, a light sensor, and an ultra-sonic sensor. Using the block-based software developed by National Instruments8 to program the behavior of the robot depending on the sensor measurement, students naturally learn basic principle of algorithm design and computer programming. The graphical user interface of the NXT software package is very similar to National Instruments industry-standard LabVIEW laboratory automation software.

In the following section, we will describe the details of our LEGO robotics outreach activity. We will then evaluate the program, describe collaborations, and finish with future plans and conclusions.

ImplementationFor our engineering outreach activity we participated in a LEGO robotics competition that is annually offered by GEAR (Get Excited About Engineering) Robotics Inc9. The competition itself consists of a series of 2 minute games, each involving 4 teams. Each teams LEGO robot must perform a series of tasks autonomously on a game field of size 8 x 8 (approx. 243 cm x 243 cm). Certain specifications on the robot in terms of size, number of motors and sensors attached, etc., have to be met. In the 2007 competition, the game field represented a fictional space elevator with a platform on top. The tasks of the robots were to rotate a solar panel, collect space debris, switch on the magnetic field, capture light and dark ice chunks and stow them at different locations, collect a comet sample, and finally park the robot in the cargo bay. Figure 1

10shows 4 robots on the game table that are parked in the cargo bay or are getting ready to park.

Figure 1: Robots moving to the cargo bay on the game field.

At the kick-off of the 6 week program, we invited elementary school teachers on campus. We showed them this years game field, explained the different challenges, and went over the rules. In addition to the teachers, we invited ECE freshmen who were interested in mentoring elementary school teams. The freshmen were mainly recruited from our freshmen course EE 1304: Introduction to Electrical and Computer Engineering and through word of mouth. Then we provided teachers from each school with 1 LEGO NXT kit, which they could keep and use for the duration of the program. Teachers from 15 different schools participated. Many of them had some experience with the older RCX Lego kits but most of them had not seen the newer NXT kits. For hands on experience during this training session, we teamed the teachers with mentors and gave them 2 hours to build the base robot and perform the first programming steps that would move the robot directly from the starting zone to the cargo bay. In addition to the LEGO NXT kit, each school was provided a game board and a set of game pieces. We left it up to the teachers how to incorporate the robotics program either into their math, science, technology, or gifted and talented curriculum, or run it as a voluntary after-school activity. Also, each school decided independently who and how many students in total were allowed to participate in the program, applying restrictions depending on grade level, grade point average (GPA) or other. We did our best to team up each school with as many ECE students, who mentored individual groups, as they requested.

During the 6 week period of the program, students built and programmed their LEGO robots such that it autonomously performed the predefined tasks of a game. The mentors assisted the teachers and students during the robotics classes / after school meetings.

The competition was held at the local Science Spectrum. From the participating schools 35 teams signed up to compete against each other. In total, over 140

elementary school students from grades 3-6 were involved in the competition, which lasted from 10 am to 4 pm.

We offered the teachers an option to keep the robot after the competition, as long as they use it, and in a short essay, describe the follow up robotics project, the number of students involved, and its duration.

In addition to the GEAR competition, we also offered LEGO robotics courses through a local community center and in the form of Super Saturdays and Summer Camps organized by the Institute For the Development and Enrichment of Advanced Learners (IDEAL) at Texas Tech University. In some of these courses, we re-used the GEAR game field and competition, in others we focused on the programming of the different sensors. For all these courses, we only had to provide the contents, equipment, and personnel. The advertisement and administration was taken care of either by IDEAL or the community center.

Evaluation

We have seen significant growth of the program over the past two years. While we had only 1 school involved in our trial competition last year, 14 schools participated this year. We attribute our success to two factors. The first is engaging the elementary school teachers in the program through training sessions at the beginning of the program and modest stipends (each teacher received a check of $200 at the end of the competition). We also provided teachers with the necessary number of LEGO kits.Nearly all elementary schools had the necessary number of computers available in order to program the laptops. The second success factor was putting paid undergraduate ECE students as mentors in the classroom with the teachers and teams. School teachers and engineering students form a natural symbiosis in this effort. While teachers are comfortable with managing a classroom full of younger students, the undergraduate students show self-confidence in solving hardware and software challenges. The complementary nature of these teaching teams is highly beneficial to team performance and commitment. The moment teachers and undergraduate students teamed up during our training session, all hesitation and worries on the teachers side disappeared immediately. We were surprised by how many ECE students showed interest in the program. Approximately half of our 21 mentors were recruited through word of mouth. They showed up at our office door and asked if they could participate in the program of which they had heard of from a classmate. We attribute this large interest to the following facts:

xLEGO robotics kits are at least as fascinating to ECE undergraduate students as they are to the participating elementary school students.xParticularly during their freshman year, electrical and computer engineering students are eagerly looking for challenging hands-on experiences that confirm them in the choice of major.xAlmost all student work at some sort of job 10.There are not many employment opportunities for ECE freshmen on campus that are related to

their major. Most jobs require a higher level of skills than what they acquired in high school

Being a mentor was very beneficial to the ECE undergraduate students. It increased their self-esteem and improved their problem-solving and communications skills. While freshmen often have the impression of not knowing anything and are frustrated about it, they were seen as the ultimate authorities by both teachers and elementary school students. Teacher often felt more at ease communicating with an ECE student than with an ECE professor. All our ECE mentors are still enrolled in their major and making progress towards their graduation.

During the competition we received many comments and testimonials from parents and teachers, stating how much the participants enjoyed the program. Learning to take small steps, verifying them, being patient, and developing problem solving ideas as well as dealing with their group members were challenges that were new to many of the students and not part of their daily curriculum. Interestingly, we observed during the competition that a number of teams had only female / male participants. The teachers told us that this was initiated by the students, who wanted to add an additional girls against boys component to the challenge. This might show the gender specific differences in approaching the given challenge. Boys, in general, tend to take over and just want to build / design / play. Girls often want to understand first how the available tools work and only start building when they are confident of their success. Thus, the girls are often a bit behind and do not get involved enough in a mixed group. We think, however, that creating mixed-gender groups is also beneficial in developing different design approaches.

All but one school decided to keep the robot after the end of the program and provided us with a description of follow-up projects for which they would use it. Two schools launched summer school programs with over 40 students involved using the LEGO NXT kits. They either re-used this years GEAR rules or the ones from last year. We supported their effort by providing them either with more LEGO NXT kits and/or tutors.

We found that our other activities such as the summer camps and the Super Saturdays received an increased interest after the GEAR competition. We attribute this to the fact that students, who were introduced to the LEGO NXT kits in school enjoyed the program so much that they wanted to continue working on design tasks with them as an extracurricular activity. They also shared their experience with friends who did not have the opportunity to participate in GEAR. One team consisting of an undergraduate and a high school senior is developing a virtual NXT that allows students to explore design options and performance tradeoffs without the robot hardware on hand. With a price of $250/ kit and access to a computer, they were not able to afford buying one for themselves. We also used our connections to grade school teachers to recruit them as instructors for the summer camps.

The anecdotal and informal evaluation of the program developed from conversations with students, mentors, teacher/coaches, and parents has been uniformly positive. Certainly the participants enjoyed the program and we expect that our next season will be even more successful in terms of numbers of participants and participating schools. We have already honored a request to provide 8 robot kits to one of our participating schools for a local exercise/competition. The question remains, however, whether we have managed

to increase both the quantity and quality of baccalaureate-level engineers and computer scientists

To achieve this goal we would need to show an increase in engineering majors that could be attributed to the program. We are in the process of tracking the participating undergraduate mentors as the cohort progresses through the engineering curriculum. As above, indications so far are 100% retention, which is an important result, but we will need to follow them further to be sure of this. The student participants in the program are too young to enter the university or make career choices so that firm enrollment numbers have a latency of several years at best. We feel very strongly that some form of objective evaluation is important to assessing the programs effectiveness, so we have engaged social scientists to design and execute an evaluation of attitudes.

Method

The evaluation research was approved by the Texas Tech University Institutional Review Board for Research with Human Subjects. While the original plan for the research evaluation was more extensive, this phase of the evaluation consisted of participating and non-participating students filling out a survey about attitudes toward science at the end of the 2006-2007 school year, at the end of or following the GEAR program. Parental consents and the surveys were distributed and collected by participating teachers, which were picked up by the research team. SPSS 14.0 was used to construct the database as well as conduct all analysis. In addition to this quantitative data, two focus groups with participating students were conducted to collect data with more depth. The focus groups were held during the last sessions of the GEAR team meetings.

Sample DescriptionIncluding participating and non-participating students, 156 children filled out the attitude survey. Demographic data is displayed in Table 1. Sixty-six percent of the sample reported that they had not participated in the GEAR program prior to the current year. Sixty-two percent reported that they did participate this year. In the overall sample, 51% of the students were male. Ages ranged from 8 to 12 years, with an average of 10.2 (SD=3.2). More students in the sample were white (45%); however, Latinos (29%) and Blacks (8.6%) were also well represented. Third through sixth graders participated in the evaluation process. Ten schools participated in the program evaluation and the research. Students attending the Super Saturdays robotics programming also completed the survey. Thirty-eight percent of the sample reported

that they attended one particular elementary school. This teaching team gave the survey to their entire roll of fifth graders (some participating in GEAR, others not) which accounts for the large sample representation. Other teachers haphazardly chose several students to represent the non-participating students.

Table 1: Sample Description for Overall Sample and GEAR Participants

Overall SampleCurrent GEAR Participants

%N%N

GEAR Participation

Current-year Participants44%62----

Current-year Non- Participants56%78----

Prior year participants33%4463%37

Prior year non-participants67%8937%22

Gender

Male51%7258%36

Female49%6842%26

Ethnicity

White45%6347%29

Latino29%4023%14

Black9%1211%7

Native American/AlaskaNative0.7%12%1

Asian/Pacific Islander2%33%2

Multi-racial12%1710%6

Other2%33%2

Not sure0.7%12%1

Grade Levels

3rd23%3226%16

4th16%2224%15

5th55%7750%31

6th6%90%0

Survey and Data Cleaning

The attitude survey consisted of several demographic type questions as well as a measurement scale adapted from a measurement tool used in previous research 11.The new scale used the terminology of science rather than engineering in anticipation that elementary aged students might not be aware of this occupation and therefore would not be able to accurately answer the questions. The scale asked students to respond yes (coded as 1) or no (coded as 0) to questions about their attitudes toward science and scientists. For the total scale score, several items were reverse coded to result in higher total scores reflecting more positive attitudes toward science and scientists.

Data screening efforts included replacing missing values and assessing for outliers and normality issues. Eleven percent of the sample was missing at least one of the attitudinal questions assessing attitudes toward science. No student left more than one question unanswered and no one item had more than 3 student responses missing. Therefore, it was determined that replacing these values would be the best way to proceed, rather than excluding 11% of the sample. Missing responses were coded as0.5 for each of the missing items making up the total attitude score. It was determined that this method would better reflect a students overall attitudes, rather than using mean substitution on the total score. Examining each of the questions making up the attitudes toward science, 3 items had an 85% split or higher, indicating that most of the students responded identically. These items were excluded from the total attitude score, resulting in a total score made up of 12 items (see Appendix A). Further, the total score for the 12 attitudinal items was significantly skewed (-.443) and there were multiple outliers. Subsequently, it was transformed by squaring each total score and resulted in a significant reduction in skew. This resulted in a possible range of 0 to 144 for the total score of attitudes toward science after transformation. The actual range for the sample was 12.25 to 144 (M=73.73, SD=34.10). It was determined at this point that the dependent variable appeared to be within acceptable limits for normality. However, when examining the total attitude scores by participation groups, according to box and stem-and-leaf plots, 2 outliers remained present in the data. The scores for these two outliers were raised to reduce their impact on the data (and eliminate their status as outliers).

Results

Quantitative Analysis

Preliminary analysis revealed no significant differences [t(138)=.294, p>.05] between the total scores of boys (M=72.9, SD=35.2) and girls (M=74.6, SD=33.1) on attitudes toward science. Similarly, whites (M=79.3, SD=35.2) and non-whites (M=68.6, SD=32.6) did not appear to differ in their attitudes [t(137)=1.86, p>.05].

Table 2: Means and Standard Deviation for Participation Groups

GroupsNMeanStandard Deviation

None5260.7835.27

Past only2271.8128.64

Current only3780.8231.79

Past and current2294.0731.29

Total13873.6934.53

Examining the program impact, different levels of participation were compared on total attitude scores. Means and standard deviations for the groups are presented in Table 2. As can be seen, the mean total scores increased with increasing exposure to and more recent exposure to GEAR program, with those students who had never participated having the least positive attitudes and those who had participated more

than once having the most positive attitudes toward science. A one-way ANOVA was conducted to examine the extent of these differences and results are displayed in Table3. As can be seen, the overall test was significant indicating a significant difference between groups.

Table 3: One-Way ANOVA for Participation Groups on Mean Attitude Scores

SSdfM SQFSig.

Between Groups19755.4836585.166.173.001

Within Groups137607.221291066.72

Total157362.71132

Post-hoc comparisons were made to determine where differences occurred. The results were interesting in that despite the increasing mean with each increasing level of participation, no participation group differed from an adjacent group on attitudes.

Those students who participated this year, whether for the first or a subsequent time, did have significantly more positive attitudes than those who had never participated. However, those students who had participated in the past (but not in the current year) did not have significantly different attitudes than any of the three participation groups (i.e. none, current, or past and current). Finally, mean scores for students who participated for the first time this year did not significantly differ from those who had participated in the past as well.

Qualitative AnalysisTwo teams of GEAR students participated in interviews with the research team. One interview was conducted with a team from a majority non-white and lower socio- economic neighborhood school (Team 1), while the second was conducted with a majority white and middle/upper socio-economic neighborhood school (Team 2). Both groups were asked about their experience in the GEAR program.

Team 1 reported that they really enjoyed participating in the GEAR program and were eager to participate again. Students said the program was fun and great. They talked about building the robot, about participating in the competition, and about the teachers and mentors assistance. Students reported that the Old robots were harder to program than the new ones, but that trying and succeeding was one of the best things about their participation. They reported that the competition was fun and frustrating at the same time as they had some difficulty with the competition board and had to make adjustments to the programming during the competition. While some of the students appeared to be somewhat disappointed that they did not do better in the competition, overall they were eager to try again next year. When asked what occupation had the most to do with the program, students quickly reported engineer.The involvement of the engineering students from TTU seemed to make this clear to the students and they reported enjoying their participation. When asked why an engineer might need to build a robot for their job, the students responded by saying to help,

things in everyday life and to help fix things. The students also noted that the elementary school teachers were very important to their success in the program.

Team 2 also reported high satisfaction of participating in GEAR Robotics program. Most of the children reported they have participated in previous years, and all wanted to participate in the future. Most of the children stated that the program was "fun" and "exciting." When asked what they liked best they stated "competition" and "team work." They spoke of the importance of the team leader and how each team had 2 leaders which took turns leading at practice. When asked what grown up job was closest to the robotics program the first stated was an "engineer" and some of the boys said "military men." The children were all very acquainted with the old robot and enjoyed the new one just the same. The kids also talked about the difficulty of programming the robot to make it do what they needed it to do. Most of the kids said that they would continue to participate in the future. They also spoke of how their teacher has helped them all learn so much about building the robots.

DiscussionOverall, the results of this phase of the evaluation appear to be positive. While the data was limited, students participating in the program currently did appear to have more positive attitudes toward science than those who did not participate. This would suggest a positive impact on of the program on students. Qualitative data from the focus groups supports this finding.

However, results further suggest that the more positive attitudes displayed by students having participated in the program may be slowly lost over time. Students who had participated in the past, but were not currently participating, did not have more positive attitudes than those who had not ever participated, nor did they have significantly less positive attitudes than those who were currently participating. Their mean scores were between the two groups, perhaps indicating that they were slowly decreasing over time. There is not enough evidence to suggest that the gains in positive attitudes are compounded by repeated exposure to programming. Students who participated for the first time this year did have a higher mean score when compared with students who had participated this year as well as previously, but the difference was not statistically significant. However, while the effect may not be compounded, it does appear that the program may be serving to at least maintain more positive attitudes, essentially acting as a booster shot for gains previously made. This might account for the differences in mean scores across the four groups, with each participation group having a slightly lower mean score (but not statistically significantly so) than the next level up. This may provide evidence supportive of the idea of funneling children through the engineering program throughout their elementary education years, thereby generating and maintaining their interest in this occupational field. Our Lego programs, GEAR, Super Saturdays, Community Center-based, and individual school-based, constitute the first part of a system of linked programs designed to foster this repeated exposure.

The focus groups clearly indicated that the students enjoyed the GEAR program and most all of the students were interested in participating again. The students did appear to make the connection that the program had to do with engineering (rather than some other field). It is unclear whether they would have made that connection without the participation of the TTU engineering student mentors. Anecdotally in our program, and with some documentation in other similar programs12the creation of relationships above and below the program in question is a critical component in maintaining engagement through the high school years.

While the teams teachers were not formally interviewed for the research project, both teachers at the schools where we conducted focus groups volunteered information to the research team about the program and its impact on students. Particularly relevant, the teacher at the lower socioeconomic neighborhood school reported how important the involvement of the TTU mentors was to the students. She reported how concerned the mentors were for her students and how they acted as very positive role models. She noted how the program offered one of her students the opportunity to succeed at something despite his low academic performance in the classroom. She was eager for an ongoing relationship with TTU Engineering. While the teacher at the higher socioeconomic neighborhood school also reported how much the students enjoyed the program and how appreciative she was for the opportunity to participate, she focused less on the personal impact on the students. From these informal discussions, it appears that the program may be fulfilling more for students with fewer opportunities for academic enrichment. It may be particularly important that these schools are partnered with TTU mentors who are likely to be highly involved with the students and able to form personal relationships with them. It would also be a benefit to assign students who are non-white to continue to encourage these students in the field.

Limitations

There were some clear limitations in this study. Most importantly, we were not able to collect pre-test data for the majority of the students. The one school we were successful in collecting data for unfortunately returned very few post data forms, so we were unable to look at changes over the course of the year. Therefore, while we were able to compare participating and non-participating students, this presents a complication in the evaluation. Teachers may choose to invite students who they think already have an interest or skill in this area. Students who self-select into the program may already have more positive attitudes toward science (or engineering) prior to the program.

Further, it is unclear whether students made the connection between science and engineering. The attitude scale questioned them about their attitudes toward science, rather than engineering due to their age. However, during the data collection with the focus groups, it was made clear that some children thought about their science class (teacher) when determining their answers on the survey, rather than considering the GEAR program. It was also clear in the focus groups that most of the students, despite their young age, did at least recognize, if not clearly understand, the word

engineering. Perhaps mainly due to the presence of the engineering college students who were acting as mentors in the program, students recognized that the GEAR program had something to do with engineering. Therefore, it is unclear whether their attitudes toward the GEAR program and towards engineering are adequately reflected in the attitudes toward science measurement tool. It is probable that further study with this age group could use the tool using the word engineering instead.

Future Plans

We plan to continue our effort in the future by offering a GEAR competition every spring semester. Together with the teacher training workshops that we will offer, we expect to further increase the number of participating schools. During the fall semesters we will assist teachers and schools that continue the robotics program by providing them with mentors as well as the required hardware. This will allow us to engage our mentors continuously. We will also start to assecc attitude changes of the ECE mentors toward their major through involvement in the GEAR program.

As previously mentioned, the attitude assessment tool used in the GEAR program should probably be revised for this age group. Further evaluation of the program should also consider making a few changes to the research design. Firstly, the research team found it difficult to maintain communication with the program teams throughout the year. This included both Texas Tech University staff as well as program teachers in the school systems. Since they were not directly participating, they missed start and stop dates as well as other program events. It is therefore recommended that perhaps the engineering mentors act as data collectors for the quantitative pre andpost-test data. It appears that they might be more successful at collecting data prior to students participation (i.e. at the first group meeting) and upon completion of the program (i.e. at the last group meeting) as they are present already. This might also allow the research team to collect follow-up data a few weeks later (upon termination of the groups) for further comparisons to be made. Another option might be to use a mail survey.

Additionally, it became clear through the data collection that teachers arrange the program in their classrooms differently, which may impact results of the attitude survey. While some students appeared to participate consistently throughout the program term, other students participate for shorter periods of time. Additionally, some teachers start working with students on robotics prior to the official start of the program while others extend the program beyond the competition day. It seems likely that the program may have differential impact related to the level of participation. Therefore, it would be advisable for the research team to attempt to capture some information about level of participation from students and/or teachers to include in next years analysis.

Conclusions

In this paper, we have described a successful engineering outreach initiative geared toward elementary school students using LEGO NXT kits and participating in

the GEAR competition. For the program to be successful, it was crucial to have the funding to provide schools with the necessary hardware and teachers with a modest stipend. A significant amount of time was needed to recruit and coordinate teachers, mentors, and schools and to prepare game pieces. The collaboration with existing institutions offering after school enrichment programs or summer camps helped us tremendously to expand our initiative, since those organizations have well established advertisement channels. Through the involvement of ECE undergraduate students as mentors aim to improve our retention rate and at the same time educate teachers and elementary school students better about engineering, a topic that for most will never occur on the curriculum. We plan to continue our effort and use the established connections to local schools to bring exciting engineering design challenges to the schools.

AcknowledgmentThe described program was supported by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board through grant contract 003644 TYT06-0002 and would not have been possible without this support

References

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