Two-Stage Approach for Long-Term Motivation of Children to Study Robotics

Abstract

While activities aimed to attract the interest of secondary school students in robotics are common, activities designed to promote the interest of younger children are rather sparse. However, younger children from families with parents not working in technical domain have a little chance to be introduced to robotics entertainingly. To fill this gap, we propose a two-stage approach by organizing both programming and technology workshops for children by a volunteering group called “wITches”, followed by a robotic competition “Robosoutěž” aimed at children who are already familiar with basic concepts. We describe the proposed approach and investigate the effect of both stages on the number of students, their gender composition and their decisions of the field of study. The gathered data indicate that while the second, robotic competition stage is vital in persuading the children to proceed to study technology and robotics, the first, workshop stage is truly crucial to allow them to enter the field at all. In particular, for more than 70% of the participants, the workshops were the first opportunity to be introduced to robotics.