Robotics integration to create an authentic learning environment in engineering education

Abstract

Authentic education, which connects the lessons with students' real-lives and their prior knowledge, has the potential to create meaningful learning environments in which students see the lessons as meaningful, useful, and relevant. However, in undergraduate engineering programs, subject matter are usually irrelevant to students' real-lives. Such disconnections might demotivate students, resulting in a lack of qualifications for entering 21 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">st</sup> century job market. I, as a robotics instructor, witnessed that robotics has the potential to create motivating authentic learning environments for students who are studying in the field of electrical and computer engineering. This study aims at inspiring other educators to integrate robotics into their teaching activities in order to contextualize the typically decontextualized subject matters in undergraduate electrical and computer engineering programs.