Experiences Incorporating Lego Mindstorms Robots in the Basic Programming Syllabus: Lessons Learned

Abstract

Basic Programming is a first year mandatory course of the Computer Engineering degree. Both students and teachers face difficulties in this course, which has high failure and drop-out rates. Several authors have proposed the use of visual programming environments and robots to overcome the difficulties of this course, some of which have been successful. This paper presents the two-year experiment using Lego Robots carried out at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) with around 100 students, along with the results. Satisfactory results have been obtained regarding both motivation and the perception of the students of their learning process; moreover the drop-out rate decreased even though no statistical significance was obtained regarding the final marks of the course. From those results and the analysis of the data it was derived that robot sessions should be more integrated in the curriculum, giving them greater relevance in the final marks. In addition, it is indispensable to classify course students and adapt learning sessions to each student type due to the high student heterogeneity.