Activity plan template: A mediating tool for supporting learning design with robotics

Abstract

Although the educational use of robotics is recognised since several decades, only recently they started being broadly used in education, formal and non formal. In this context many different technologies have emerged accompanied by relevant learning material and resources. Our observation is that the vast number of learning activities is driven by multiple “personal pedagogies” which results in the fragmentation of the domain. To address this problem we propose the construct of “activity plan template”, a generic design tool that will facilitate different stakeholders (teachers, instructors, researchers) to design learning activities for different robotic toolkits. In this paper we discuss the characteristics of the activity plan template and the research process employed to generate it. Since we report work in progress, we present here the first version of the activity plan template, the construction of which is based on a set of best practices identified and on previous work for the introduction of digital technologies in education.