The impact of robotics assisted programming education on academic success, problem solving skills and motivation

Abstract

Because of their traditional programming structures that have user-hostile interfaces and complicated syntax, programming languages education doesn’t catch students’ attention and most of them find programming difficult and consider it as a job that only professionals can do. In order to minimalize the difficulty and drawback and help students acquire programming skills, programming education must be supported with visual and tangible tools. In this study, effect of robotics assisted programming education on students’ academic success, problem solving skills and motivation was analyzed. In the study, in which quasi-experimental design with pretest-posttest control group, one of the quantitative methods of research was used and the study was carried out on 50 students split into experimental and control groups. Robotics assisted ROBOTC programming education with LEGO® Mindstorms EV3 was carried out with the students of experimental group and for the control group basic C programming education was given. As a result of the data obtained within the scope of the study that lasted for 8 weeks, it was found that academic success, problem solving skills and motivation of students who received robotics assisted programming education were higher than who received robotics unassisted programming education.