Geek Toys for Non-techies? Using Robots in Introductory Programming Courses for Computer Science Non-majors

Abstract

While LEGO® MINDSTORMS® robots and Arduino boards are widely used today in high school education to stimulate pupils' interest for technology-related subjects or to introduce beginner computer science students to programming, it is interesting how these tools may be successfully used also in programming education of technology-agnostic non-computer science majors. A possible lack of motivation as well as of practical IT skills to handle the development environments for these tools here form a specific challenge. Therefore, in this paper a learning environment and toolchain especially tailored for this target group is proposed and empirically evaluated in a classroom setting. Results indicate that with a proper setup and development environment these "geek toys" may be successfully used also for more technology-agnostic audiences.