Teaching Programming to Elementary Aged Students Using Robots Gavin Kearns

Karen H. JIN

Department of Computer Science, University of New Hampshire

Acknowledgements – This research was supported with funding from the National Science Foundation’s Research Experience for Teachers in Engineering Grant (ENG-1132648).

AbstractDuring a one-week half-day summer camp for 3rd-5th graders, children were given exposure to computational thinking by programming Lego Mindstorms EV3 robots. A pre- and post-test of common programming concepts and vocabulary was used to gauge their understanding before attending and after attending the camp. In analyzing the answers from the anonymous tests, it shows that after the short program, the children significantly expanded their breadth of knowledge about programming and general concepts of computing.

Background: Elementary aged students are being exposed to more technology than ever before; young children are using tablet computers in the same way that children twenty years ago used a speak and spell. However this does not mean that a generation of computer geniuses are being raised because emphasis is typically placed on teaching computer applications rather than actual programming. New Hampshire maintains an Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) literacy program in grades K-12 that provides opportunities for students to become competent in the use of 21st century tools (ICT-NHEON, 2008). In these standards, by 8th grade students should be competent in use of 21st century tools but it does not provide for the education of how computers work or how they are programmed.  In previous studies of teaching programming to elementary aged children, robots are a common theme. If a child is working on something that is meaningful to them, they will be more motivated to learn from the experience (Atmatzidou 2008). By using robots, they see a tangible object that is being controlled by their programs. Another benefit to using robots is it allows the use of games and competition to foster the entertainment value of learning to program and succeeding in the challenges that can be presented. (Atmatzidou 2008). EPIC Camp is a new camp program organized by the Computer Science Department in the University of New Hampshire. It is aimed at 3rd-5th graders that would be interested in learning about how computers are programmed to do tasks. At EPIC Camp the objective was for the campers to know basic programming vocabulary, understand how a computer operates according to a program, and practice in problem solving. The camp runs for 2.5 hours per day for one week. There were total 17 campers registered. 16 of them took both exams1. Among them, 4 were girls.  1One camper was a visitor from out of country and was not given the test due to language barrier.

Methods:At the start of the first day of camp, campers were given an 11 question multiple choice pre-test of the content knowledge that would be covered in the one week camp. The tests were anonymous. The campers were told to answer to the best of their ability and questions included a choice of “I don’t know.” This allowed campers to either give us a correct answer, a guess, or truthfully say they didn’t know.  During the first four days of camp, campers were taught how to program a Lego Mindstorms EV3 robot. The material mainly covers how to program the robot to make simple and more advanced movement and how to use the color and ultrasonic sensors.  At the start of each day campers would copy down important vocabulary that they would hear in the discussion of new concepts during that day’s camp. A 10-15 minutes presentation would detail how to use certain blocks that programmed the robot and reinforce the vocabulary that they wrote. The camps would spend most of the time playing with their robots in teams.

Before campers began the last day of camp, they took the same test again as a post-test to measure what they learned since arriving at camp. A mini robotic competition was held afterward, in which campers used the vocabulary and tools to accomplish a set of challenges.  There were total 10 hours of camp hours between the pre and post test. There was no specific discussion on test questions throughout camp instructions.

Results:

Figure 1: The percentage of campers that got each specific question correct.

Figure 2: From lowest to highest, the range of scores on the pre- and post-test.

Figure 3: The lowest, median, and highest scores achieved in the pre- and post-test.

Discussion:

From the results there was a marked improvement in the correctness of the overall test and specific test question. In collecting data, specific campers were not tracked, so from the data we don’t know how any one camper improved, only as a whole. Figure 1 shows how much on average the campers learned. Six of the 11 questions were below 50% in the pre-test, in the post-test only two were. Most notably questions 10 and 11 were reading a program to derive its function; post-test results showed between an 80%-100% correctness.  Figure 2 shows the range of scores from pre- to post-test. Pre-test range was from 14%-78%, while post-test it was 64%-100%. While the data cannot be used to see which camper improved by how much, learning programming through robotics can greatly impact the amount of understanding of the content. Figure 3 shows the difference pre- and post-test between the low, median, and high scores. It is important to see just how much scores improved after one week of a half-day camp. The lowest score achieved went from nearly 10% to 64% and the median went from 42% to 81%.  In similar programs where elementary aged students use robots for programming, those exposed early in childhood are more likely to be interested in a STEM career (Varney 2012). Early introduction to programming and robots also improves students’ view of science in general (Karp 2010). Our data suggests that using robots is an effective way for students to learn the basic concepts of writing code for computers.

Conclusion/Summary: 

Programming is an important current and future skill that needs to be promoted among impressionable young minds. The current STEM initiative among public schools does not often focus on the programming, usually it is about the application of computers. The EPIC camp shows that it is very effective to use the Lego Mindstorm EV3 robot, to expose elementary aged children to programming and computing. The pre and post-test results clearly showed that children improved their knowledge significantly over the short five half day robotic camp program. References: (2008). ICT - NHEON. Retrieved August 3, 2014, from http://www.nheon.org/ictliteracy/kit1.html. Atmatzidou, S., Markelis, I., & Demetriadis, S. (2008). The use of LEGO mindstorms in elementary and secondary education: Game as a way of triggering learning. Paper presented at the Workshop Proceedings of International Conference on Simulation, Modeling, and Programming for Autonomous Robots (SIMPAR), Karp, T., Gale, R., Lowe, L. A., Medina, V., & Beutlich, E. (2010). Generation NXT: Building young engineers with LEGOs. Education, IEEE Transactions on, 53(1), 80-87. doi:10.1109/TE.2009.2024410 Varney, M. W., Janoudi, A., Aslam, D. M., & Graham, D. (2012). Building young engineers: TASEM for third graders in woodcreek magnet elementary school. IEEE Transactions on Education, 55(1), 78-82. doi:10.1109/TE.2011.2131143