Exploring the effectiveness of robotics as a vehicle for computational thinking

The purpose of this study was to identify the viability of robotics in learning about programming and algorithmic thinking. The goal of this study was threefold. The first goal was to identify the effectiveness of the use of robotics as a way to infuse practices of computational thinking such as algorithm design and programming. The second goal was to identify if students with a non-computing background can perform similarly in a robotics problem solving task as students with a computing background. The third goal was to identify if the lab module could increase participant interest towards algorithmic thinking, programming and robotics. An appropriate design that allowed measuring the extent to which robotics would help attaining these two objectives was a pre-test post-test comparative study between students from computing and non-computing majors. Constructionism is the theoretical framework that informed the design of this study and participants in this study were exposed to a lab module to make the robot travel through predefined shapes. The participants in this study were either in freshman or sophomore years of Purdue University and the sample consisted of 26 participants with two different backgrounds where 13 of them were from computing or related majors and the remaining from non-computing majors. Outcomes of the study suggest that robotics served as an effective and viable vehicle to infuse practices of computational thinking and participant\u27s background did not have much effect in problem solving tasks. The results suggest that the tangible programming nature of the robotics could have played a crucial role in the results of the study. The implications of this study relate to the use of robotics to increase student\u27s interest towards algorithmic design, principles of programming and robotics. Also to the use of robotics serves as a viable curricula option to teach STEM courses to both computing and non-computing students