Resources for Robot Competition Success: Assessing Math Use in Grade-School-Level Engineering Design

Abstract

This is an exploratory study of the use of math in the design solutions of a middle and elementary school level robot competition. Competition scores were used as measures of engineering design success. Sixteen teams were interviewed on the day of the competition to assess their use of math in their design solutions. Four of those teams were followed additionally prior to and after the competition using survey instruments measuring math use in robot transfer problems and attitudes toward robots and math. These measures assessed potential impacts beyond competition success. Only one quarter of the teams used math explicitly in their design solutions. The use of math was found to have a highly variable relationship with design success, with the highest and very low scoring teams in the competition having used math. However, both successful and unsuccessful cases of teams that used math did exhibit improved use of math on the transfer test. Further, in the case of an unsuccessful math-using team, the students' did have more positive interest in math and in robots as well as more positive views about the value of math for robots after the experience of preparing for and participating in the competition.