Katie Wilkinson

Papers

Total Citations

234

H-Index

About

Katie Wilkinson is a leading researcher at the intersection of robotics and education, best known for her pioneering work in developing and assessing mobile robotics curricula for secondary school students. Her major contributions center on the design and formal evaluation of the Robotic Autonomy course, a groundbreaking program created in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute and the University of Pittsburgh’s Learning Research and Development Center. Her most cited paper, “The Robotic Autonomy Mobile Robotics Course: Robot Design, Curriculum Design and Educational Assessment” (2004, 154 citations), provides a comprehensive framework for integrating hands-on robotics into classrooms. A companion study, “Formal measures of learning in a secondary school mobile robotics course” (2004, 80 citations), offers rigorous evidence of the course’s educational impact, drawing on data from a summer 2002 pilot taught to thirty students at Carnegie Mellon West in partnership with NASA/Ames. Wilkinson’s work has been instrumental in demonstrating how robotics can foster critical thinking and problem-solving skills, influencing both curriculum design and assessment methodologies in STEM education. Her research continues to inspire educators and researchers seeking to bridge engineering and learning science.