Authors:
Ilenia Fronza
1
;
Nabil El Ioini
1
and
Luis Corral
2
Affiliations:
1
Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy
;
2
ITESM / UAQ, Mexico
Keyword(s):
Educational Robotics, Computational Thinking, Maze.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Computer-Supported Education
;
Higher Order Thinking Skills
;
Learning/Teaching Methodologies and Assessment
;
Project Based Learning and Engineering Education
Abstract:
In 2013, ACM recognized Computational Thinking (CT) as “one of the fundamental skills desired of all graduates”.
This means that, especially in liberal education environments, one of the challenges of CT courses is to
motivate students who are discouraged upfront as they perceive programming as a difficult task. Applications
that have tangible results typically stimulate students’ interests. For instance, Educational Robotics (ER) is
recognized as a tool to enhance higher order thinking skills and to facilitate teamwork. In this paper, we describe
a course that has been designed to use ER (i.e., programming a maze-solving robot) to foster CT. Each
activity of the course has been designed to foster specific CT skills and to contribute to CT assessment, which
remains a challenge in CT research. We report the results of an experiment, in a liberal education environment,
with a total of 13 ninth graders (15.4% M, 84.6% F).