Investigating students' computational thinking through STEM robot-based learning activities

Abstract

Nowadays, robots are an important learning tool in education and are increasingly used inside and outside the classroom to foster the development of students' knowledge, skills, and attitudes connecting to a real-world situation. In past years, using robots in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education has been proposed as one of the strategies to integrate the different fields in order to construct more effective projects and innovations. Especially, engineering is the combination of math and science in solving a problem. Nevertheless, students could not understand and appreciate how to apply the knowledge of interdisciplinary integration to operate certain tasks by the engineering method. This research article presents STEM robot-based learning activities (STEM-RoLA) with sixty high-school students who were studying science and engineering. The obtained results show that the proposed STEM-RoLA is beneficial for students, especially when compared with high and low robotics performance students. The results found that high robotics performance students have higher computational thinking than low robot performance students, and they have a positive engagement response in the learning activity.