Robots as a Context for
Computer Science Education
IPRE’s Approach
The Institute for Personal Robots in Education
Mark Guzdial, Georgia Institute of Technology
Based on a talk by: Doug Blank, Bryn Mawr College
with Tucker Balch, Deepak Kumar, Stewart Tansley, Jared Jackson,
Natasha Eilbert, Keith O’Hara, Daniel Walker, Gaurav Gupta, Jay
Summet, and Monica Sweat
IPRE Overview
Research Project
Mission: explore making CS education more
fun and effective through the context of a
personal robot
Target: All levels, from middle
school to graduate school
Joint effort hosted at Georgia Tech
with Bryn Mawr College (+ MSR)
3 year seed funding provided by
Microsoft Research (MSR)
Special ingredient and hypothesis:
A personal robot for every student
IPRE: Lead Institutions
Georgia Institute of Technology
Tier 1 research university, founded in 1885
15,000 students
72% male
All students required to take CS
Bryn Mawr College
Liberal arts college, founded in 1885
1,200 students
Nearly 100% female
Few students know they have CS
Hypotheses for the
Challenges of CS Education
Students don’t have a clear idea what CS is
CS curricula have inherent and explicit biases
that deter people from CS
Current programming languages are
overwhelming for beginners
CS has been taught exactly backwards and upside
down
IPRE Focus: A Personal Robot
Every student gets their own robot
Small enough to carry in backpack
Cost about the price of a textbook
Wireless, controlled from computer
Interactive and easy to program
Personalizable
More than “just a robot”
Personal Robot
turnLeft(.5)
speak(“Hello, Gamers!”)
playMusic(“madonna.wav”)
setFace(“smile”)
takePicture()
penDown(“red”)
IPRE’s Philosophy
The Personal Robot provides the context
The needs of the curriculum drive the design of the
robot, software, and text
The software should be easy to pick up, but scales
with experience
An accessible, engaging environment for new, diverse
students
Computer Science != programming
Computing as a social activity
Computing as a medium for creativity
Focus on performances rather than competitions
IPRE Research Goals
Hardware – robot
Software – easy for programmers to write
controllers
Curricular Materials – focus on learning CS
Hardware: Ideal Personal Robot
Medium for creativity
Inexpensive
Robust
Fun
IPRE Pilot Hardware Kit
Featuring Parallax’s Scribbler
6 Light sensors
7 IR sensors
Stall sensor
Speaker
5 LEDs
2 motors
Bluetooth wireless
Camera
Gamepad
Scribbler with IPRE Fluke
Now available at www.roboteducation.org
Serial Connection over
Bluetooth
Serial Bluetooth
Adapter
USB Bluetooth
Adapter
Software: Goals
Easy to learn, but doesn’t seem simplistic as the
student grows in experience: “pedigogically scalable”
Easy to use: no compile-download-run or other
complications
Instant gratification: interactive, dynamic
Modern: be able to take advantage of existing and
future robots
Open source: available for study or change
Cross-platform: core runs on Linux, Mac, and Windows
Python
Looks like English
Indentation matters
Interactive
Easy to learn, but powerful
… IronPython gives access to Microsoft
Robotics Studio
… and Linux and Macintosh via Mono
Python Follow the Light
def followLight():
setForwardness(0)
left = 0
right = 2
while timeRemaining(30):
if robot.getLight(left) < robot.getLight(right):
turnLeft(1.0)
if robot.getLight(right) < robot.getLight(left):
turnRight(1.0)
forward(1.0,0.1)
followLight()
Myro: My Robot
Library of functions
Robot movements
Sound and Music
Communication
Web interaction
Vision and Image Processing
Interfaces with Robotics Studio
Using Myro
1. Install software on any computer
(Mac, Linux, or Windows)
2. Establish Bluetooth connection
(via a Serial port)
3.
4.
5.
6.
Start Python
Load Myro
“Initialize” connection with robot
Have fun!
Start Python (IDLE)
Testing Myro, without robot
Testing the Robot
from myro import *
init(“your COM port here”)
forward(1,1)
joyStick()
beep(1,440)
Curriculum Goals
Bring in examples from other related disciplines
(e.g., biology, AI, humanities)
Explicitly focus on robotics rather than
programming constructs (e.g., chapter titles
such as “Building Brains” rather than
“Variables” or “Loops”)
But, implicitly focus on Computing
We believe this defines the notion of a context
… and would work equally well with gameotics
Connections to Biology and
Psychology
Programming as a social activity
Making stories with robots
“Civic Computing”
A CS1 Assignment: Exploring a Pyramid
Robot Movies
Cool project by Jay Summet:
Creative, Collaborative – and
Distributed/Parallel!
Robots are characters.
Multiple characters mean multiple students with
multiple robots.
One robot is camera
How do you zoom?
Aim and go forward!
Challenges:
How do you know when your actors are in their
places?
How do you “cue” the others?
Post-processing media 28
computation for eerie
disappearing effects.
Example Movie
Games and Robots
YouTube game videos available at cs.brynmawr.edu/games
Towards an Accessible, Engaging
Environment for new, diverse
students
Competitions? Collaborations!
Race? Orchestra!
Compute factorial? Dance!
Battlebots? A robot play!
Draw a square? Abstract robot art!
Initial Assessment
What was the most important or
interesting thing that you learned in this
course?
"That computer science can be creative!"
Formative Interviews
The robot did add a new dimension of excitement to
the class.
“It made it interesting to apply the computer programming to
the robot – was not bland and gave it another dimension.”
“Not many people can say 'yes I programmed a robot.' But now
I can!”
The robot was an additional complexity for the
students.
“Midway through we had tons of Bluetooth issues – I had to
blindly write my code and then use someone else’s robot. Was
unable to use mine for the last half of the semester and that
was no fun.”
“My robot died at that point but I would have done lots more
than I was asked to do dancing, lights, music, etc.”
Formative Interviews
It took effort to integrate the robot into the course.
“[I] forgot [in lectures] that we were doing robots.”
“We had one designated robotics TA for the whole class but he
was only available to us twice a week. If homework is due and
it's not time to talk to the TA, then we asked Monica and it was
a lot for her. Sometimes the robotics TA didn’t know because it
was new to him too.”
“[It was] all robot in homework, but not in lecture.”
Students were anxious about using the robot at first.
“Thought it would be harder.”
“[I was] scared of the robot.”
Assessment Results
Three main trials so-far:
Spring 2007: Attitudes robot (GT and Bryn
Mawr) and non-robot (GT)
Interviews to establish themes
Surveys to test themes across whole class
Fall 2007: More careful testing of learning,
same groupings
Spring 2008 vs. Spring 2009: Comparing
similar cohorts, non-robots vs. robots
Attitudes in Spring 2007
All students enjoyed the robot, were
comfortable with it, and found it easy to
get working.
Personalizing the robot improved the course,
in students’ opinion.
Reported that the class was about
computer science
Found homework challenging
Differences in Attitudes
Spring 2007
BMC students did more on homework “because
it was cool.”
BMC students were undeclared majors.
Reported being more excited about CS afterward.
GT students were already declared majors.
Less excited about robots overall, but more
interested than BMC in more courses in computer
science.
Tended not to talk about the course to others.
Fall 2007:
Final Exam Comparison at GT
The final exam taken by all students had
five shared questions.
Shared questions did not require
experience with the robot, but in some
cases used “robotic” situations.
Example Question: Recursion
Results: Robot students did
on average 10% better
Robots vs. Non-Robots
0.8
Equality
0.93
0.9
Exam Question
Reading1
0.72
0.66
Reading3
Robots
Non-Robots
0.46
0.51
Tracing
0.44
0.64
Recursion
0.44
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
Percent "Perfect" Answers
0.7
0.8
0.9
1
Statistically Significant p <=
0.015
Robots vs. Non-Robots
0.8
Equality
0.93
0.9
Exam Question
Reading1
0.72
0.66
Reading3
Robots
Non-Robots
0.46
TracingIgnore
the Tracing Question
0.51
0.44
0.64
Recursion
0.44
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
Percent "Perfect" Answers
0.7
0.8
0.9
1
Confound: Differences in Class
Demographics
Due to the laptop requirement, advisors steered
students who were declared as CS majors into
the robots class, and other students into the nonrobots class.
4% CS/Computation Majors in the Non-Robots
class
81% CS/Computation majors in Instructor B's
Robots class.
(This is why you collect demographic
information!)
W’s vs. F’s,
statistically significant
Using a Distributed Approach
Several schools seeded with robots and
funds, working with us on assessment.
Shorter College
Rowan University
Georgia State University
The University of Tennessee – Knoxville
The University at Albany – SUNY
Phillips Exeter Academy
Spring 2008 Non-Robots vs.
Spring 2009 Robots
Comparing robots vs. non-robots with
demographics controlled:
No difference in grade distribution
No difference in pass/fail (WDF) rates
Only 33% of enrolled students had prior
knowledge that it was a robots class. Of
those:
35% of students said that the robot was a positive
influence on taking the course.
15% said it was a negative influence.
Robots vs. Non-Robots:
Significant Attitude
Differences
I am confident in my science reasoning ability.
There was at least one homework that I spent extra time on....
Robots
NonRobots
I enjoyed this class.
2 .8
3
3 .2
3 .4
3 .6
3 .8
4
Differences in yes/no quests
Statement
Spring 2009
Robots Class
Percentage
Agreement
Spring 2008 NonRobots class
My experiences in this
class caused me to
decide to take another
computer science class.
27%
32%
I expect that I will have to
write a program (in any
language) after I finish
this class.
41%
39%
36%
27%
During the class, I wrote a
program that was not an
assignment for this class.
Status of Assessment
Developing a standardized set of instruments
Are not too hard or too easy
Have little response to variations in instructor
Are acceptable to a wide range of instructors
Work with non-GaTech/BMC schools
Looking Forward
Robotics Studio is too complex for our
target audience, but we provide an easy
path for students to take to explore
advanced robotics through it
Robotics Studio offers a Visual
Programming Language that warrants
exploration in the CS1 environment
What about attraction and retention?
Does the robot context help?
Bryn Mawr College Data for 12
years of CS2
10
8
6
4
2
0
CS2 Data Structures Enrollment
Looks Promising!
20
15
10
5
0
CS2 Data Structures Enrollment
Future Work
Implement our
robot design
Move from
CPython to
IronPython
Pyjama
CCLI Phase II
Develop additional
curricular
resources
Conclusions
Through the context of a Personal Robot
we hope to make computing more
personal, interesting, and effective
Initial assessment shows that students
learn about computing, find it
challenging, yet enjoyable
Questions?
For more information please visit
cs.brynmawr.edu/games
&
www.roboteducation.org