Using Educational Robotics to Support Active Learning Experiences and Foster Computational Thinking Skills among Non-STEM University Students

Abstract

During the last two decades educational robotics became a popular tool for teaching STEM concepts to audiences of all levels. Yet, its use for teaching programming with university-level non-STEM audiences has not been researched so far. This work presents a new educational activity designed for teaching programming to non-STEM university-level audiences. The key aspect is a separation of teaching programming concepts and programming language and; therefore, complexity reduction in learning. The concepts are introduced using educational robotics and later on students learn how to use the concepts in the context of the Python programming language. Two teaching approaches, direct instruction and productive failure, along with a capstone challenge are deployed and their relationship to educational robotics is observed.