Leveraging Robot Programming to Foster Computational Thinking

Ilenia Fronza, Nabil El Ioini, Luis Corral

2017

Abstract

In 2013, ACM recognized Computational Thinking (CT) as “one of the fundamental skills desired of all graduates”. This means that, especially in liberal education environments, one of the challenges of CT courses is to motivate students who are discouraged upfront as they perceive programming as a difficult task. Applications that have tangible results typically stimulate students’ interests. For instance, Educational Robotics (ER) is recognized as a tool to enhance higher order thinking skills and to facilitate teamwork. In this paper, we describe a course that has been designed to use ER (i.e., programming a maze-solving robot) to foster CT. Each activity of the course has been designed to foster specific CT skills and to contribute to CT assessment, which remains a challenge in CT research. We report the results of an experiment, in a liberal education environment, with a total of 13 ninth graders (15.4% M, 84.6% F).

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Fronza I., El Ioini N. and Corral L. (2017). Leveraging Robot Programming to Foster Computational Thinking . In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 2: CSEDU, ISBN 978-989-758-240-0, pages 109-116. DOI: 10.5220/0006310101090116

in Bibtex Style

@conference{csedu17,
author={Ilenia Fronza and Nabil El Ioini and Luis Corral},
title={Leveraging Robot Programming to Foster Computational Thinking},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 2: CSEDU,},
year={2017},
pages={109-116},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0006310101090116},
isbn={978-989-758-240-0},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 2: CSEDU,
TI - Leveraging Robot Programming to Foster Computational Thinking
SN - 978-989-758-240-0
AU - Fronza I.
AU - El Ioini N.
AU - Corral L.
PY - 2017
SP - 109
EP - 116
DO - 10.5220/0006310101090116