Lego League Research Articles

Potentialising the potential: Dream of everything you can become, and become everything you dream of

In education, the child is often observed as a potential to be shaped and realised. In this article, we analyse the educational program, First Lego League. Surprisingly, its aim is not simply to realise a potential, but to potentialise the child to become unlimited potential. Children should become ‘a force for change’, and they are told that ‘you can be anything, just do it!’. To implement this program, First Lego League develops a transition medium that consists of non-representative, presentational symbols such as play, fun, innovation, dance and discovery. Such a program does not come without costs. Our analysis reveals how negativity is negated, knowledge is devalued and the children’s selfnarratives are decoupled. This could result in children being confronted with paradoxical demands, which are difficult to navigate. Analytically, the article draws on Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory and in particular his concepts of form and medium.

INVESTIGATING POTENTIALITIES OF FLL (FIRST LEGO LEAGUE) COMPETITION IN SCHOOL LEARNING PROCESS OF BASIC EDUCATION STUDENTS

This work addresses the use of the educational robotics as learning tools. The paper aims to evaluate the possible contributions of the First Lego League (FLL) robotics competition to develop students knowledge and required skills for good professionals. To achieve the research objective, this article presents a study that provides objective data based on the opinions of teachers and students that participated of the FLL. The data analysis strongly indicates that both teachers and students believe in FLL potential to promote school performance and the development of the skills of a good professional.

Investigating the Effect of Community-Based Educational Robotics Programs on Underrepresented Youth

Traditional STEM academic programs have a large discrepancy in participation and engagement between low-income and minority students as compared to their peers from other demographics. This underrepresentation is visible beginning in the classroom and carrying through to higher education and the STEM workforce. The Ware Research Group previously studied the STEM learning environments of low-income communities in Lafayette, IN. Study results suggested that traditionally structured classroom environments were not effective in achieving high levels of participation and engagement in STEM material. To address this deficit, the research group is observing how community-centered STEM programs affect participation and engagement from low-income and minority students. The research group is using FIRST LEGO League (FLL), an internationally recognized STEM program for students in grades 4-8, as the vehicle for STEM education. Two FLL teams have been established in community centers serving the same communities previously studied by the research group. These teams focus on the STEM curriculum developed for the FLL program, focusing on action-based projects and the development of STEM and soft skills. The participating students on the teams range in age from 9-14 and offer a snapshot of the community demographic. This study is collecting qualitative data on student growth based on STEM engagement and overall educational outcomes. The team hypothesized students will see measurable improvements in skills such as programming, critical thinking, and communication. Thus far, qualitative observations have supported the hypothesis; however, the study will need to continue before making final conclusions. Community-based STEM programs may improve student representation in STEM programs and fields. If this study is proven to be successful, it could provide a resource for developing similar community-based stem programming.

WHERE LANGUAGE AND ENGINEERING MEET: FOSTERING EMERGING ENGINEERING IDENTITIES AMONG INTERNATIONAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS


 Abstract –This paper explores the impact of incorporating discipline-specific content into a university pathways program designed for first-year engineering English language learners. In an effort to increase feelings of connectedness and encourage the development of student identity for students who must complete the bridging program before beginning full-degree studies, a collaboration with First-Year Engineering, FIRST Lego League and the Engineering IDEAS Clinics began whereby students worked with instructors, professors, and students from the Engineering Faculty as part of their language courses. Student motivation and sense of faculty connection increased through the integration of these discipline-specific assessments and activities, and, overall the students reflected positively on these experiences.

The Role of Robotics Teams’ Collaboration Quality on Team Performance in a Robotics Tournament

AbstractBackgroundWorking effectively in teams is an important 21st century skill as well as a fundamental component of the ABET professional competencies. However, successful teamwork is challenging, and empirical studies with adolescents concerning how the collaboration quality of team members is related to team performance are limited.Purpose/HypothesisThis study investigated the relationship between team collaboration quality and team performance in a robotics competition using multiple measures of team performance, including both objective task performance and expert judge evaluations, on a diverse set of supporting performance dimensions.Design/MethodData included Table Score, Robot Design, Research Project, Core Values, and Collaboration Quality scores for 366 youths on 61 K‐8 robotics teams that participated in a FIRST LEGO League Championship. Regression and mediation analyses were conducted to explore the relation between effective team collaboration and team performance. Furthermore, analysis of variance was conducted to explore the relationship between Collaboration Quality and team experience.ResultsCollaboration Quality was a good predictor of robotics team performance across all measures (with R2 = .50 and p < .001). Mediation analysis revealed that the Robot Design acted as a full mediator for the predictive effect of Collaboration Quality on the Table Score. In addition, the cumulative amount of team experience was significantly related to Collaboration Quality.ConclusionsOverall, this study using collaboration performance assessments and actual competition data with a large number of teams confirms the importance of high‐quality teamwork in producing superior products with students engaged in authentic engineering tasks.

The Courage to Dream and Achieve: Advocating for gender equality [WIE from Around the World

When Ayat Mohammad Mahmoud was in the seventh grade, her father took her to work with him one day. He worked as a caretaker at a local private school in Jordan, and on this particular day, the students were participating in a First Lego League (FLL) robotics competition that her father thought she might like to watch. Mohammad Mahmoud was mesmerized watching the robots work their way through different challenges on the large game boards. fell in love instantly, she recalls. knew it was the only thing I wanted to do, and I knew I had the capability to do it.

Why it is harder to run RoboCup in South Africa

Robots are widely used as a vehicle to spark interest in science and technology in learners. A number of initiatives focus on this issue, for instance, the Roberta Initiative, the FIRST Lego League, the World Robot Olympiad and RoboCup Junior. Robotic competitions are valuable not only for school learners but also for university students, as the RoboCup initiative shows. Besides technical skills, the students get some project exposure and experience what it means to finish their tasks on time. But qualifying students for future high-tech areas should not only be for students from developed countries. In this article, we present our experiences with research and education in robotics within the RoboCup initiative, in Germany and South Africa; we report on our experiences with trying to get the RoboCup initiative in South Africa going. RoboCup has a huge support base of academic institutions in Germany; this is not the case in South Africa. We present our ‘north–south’ collaboration initiatives in RoboCup between Germany and South Africa and discuss some of the reasons why we think it is harder to run RoboCup in South Africa.

Estudio sobre diferencias de género en las competencias y las estrategias educativas para el desarrollo del pensamiento computacional

Computational thinking is a competence that should be included in the training of every student of different educational stages, from the lower to the higher stages. However, there are fewer women that choose in their post-secondary education careers related to computer science. Therefore, this article analyzes the main initiatives of teaching the computational thinking, and also the gender gap in computer education. In order to know strategies of computational thinking and the gender differences which were found; it has been made a study about the opinions of teachers, judges, referees and volunteers of the national educational robotics competition FLL (First Lego League), whom was held in Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 2015. The results indicate that although there are more male presence in the tournament, there are no significant gender differences in the skills related to programming and learning computational thinking, because boys and girls learn and process information fairly.

Robotics and Its Effects on the Educational System of Montenegro

The paper presents the results of research conducted among students of primary and secondary schools inMontenegro about robotics and its place in Montenegrin educational system. Survey was used as a data collectingmethod in the study and the results were obtained using theoretical analysis. Attitudes of Montenegrin students werecompared with similar studies conducted in the world. It was undisputed that the Montenegrin school studentsshowes great interest in acquiring knowledge in field of robotics. Elementary school students gained their firstknowledge of mechatronics during preparation for the competition “First Lego League” (FLL), while high schoolstudents got knowledge through preparations for the competition “First Tech Challenge” (FTC). The aim of studywas to introduce views and proposals of students related to the further development of the teaching process in thefield of robotics.

FIRST Things First: University partnerships bolster VA-DC teams [Pipelining: Attractive Programs for Women

Starting in November 2014, students all over the world took on a shared challenge: to find a better or more innovative way to help someone learn. It's a looking- in-the-mirror moment for the FIRST LEGO League (FLL) program, which sponsors an annual competition tasking students to solve real-world engineering challenges through a research project and the creation, build, and programming of a functional robot. FIRST, which stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, provides a hands-on way for students to see that science and math, subjects taught in school, have real-world application to human problems, says Dr. Bob Kolvoord, dean of the James Madison University (JMU) College of Integrated Science and Engineering and codirector of the JMU Center for STEM Education and Outreach.

Girls, Boys, and 'Bots: The St. Clare's robotics team [Pipelining: Attractive Programs for Women

At St. Clare's School in Staten Island, New York, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education starts early. With the school's strong focus on STEM, by the time students are old enough to join a FIRST LEGO League (FLL) team in fourth grade, they've already learned some basic robotics and cultivated strategies for developing and presenting a scientific research project.

A review of Technology Education in Ireland; a changing technological environment promoting design activity

In Ireland, Technology Education’s structure and organisation across the levels of education is not delivered or governed in a coherent manner. Technology Education in primary level education, for students between 5 and 12 years of age, does not explicitly exist as a separate subject. In primary level education, Social, Environmental and Scientific Education (Science), encourages a child to examine and appreciate how technology and science impacts on their lives and the environment. It supports children developing design and make skills, and to apply scientific ideas to everyday situations and practical problems (DES in Primary school curriculum, science. Social, environmental and scientific education curriculum, 1999). In addition, various initiatives such as the Junior Lego League, supported by the Galway Education Centre, facilitate various perspectives of Technology Education. In second level education, which this paper primarily focuses on, Technology Education exists as a suite of eight subjects, for students of 12–18 years of age. In third level education students can choose from a wide range of bachelor degree programmes in science, technology, engineering or maths. The degree programmes available at third level also include programmes in initial teacher education (ITE). These programmes in initial teacher education are offered by two institutions, and graduate second level teachers to service the second level system. Technology Education in second level education was first introduced to Ireland in 1885. Since this introduction, revisions and changes have occurred, in both the Irish economy and syllabi. In 2006, Technology Education syllabi were revised to include more design activity at senior cycle. These changes reflect the forward thinking of policy makers in reflection of the progression from the industrial era to the information era to the conceptual era. The scope of second level Technology Education in an Irish context is still perceived by many as vocational, though progressive reformations are advancing towards a design-driven framework, grounded in a strong craft practice. This changing technological environment has resulted in the promotion of design activity in second level Technology Education in Ireland. This paper reviews the establishment of design education in Technology Education in the Irish second level education context, where an epistemological shift towards design activity has occurred.

Attracting Students to the Computing Disciplines: A Case Study of a Robotics Contest

Guiding high school students towards a specific career choice is one of the challenges that parents, teachers, and career- counselors alike have to participate in with a lot of involvement. While career-fairs, open-houses, and other such activities from universities play an important role in attracting students to specific programs, it has been felt over the years that students tend to choose relatively easy majors and avoid computing and similar disciplines due to the involvement of programming and mathematics. This trend has affected Computer Science programs throughout the world in different proportions. In this paper we would like to share our experiences with an effort to make high school students more aware of the computing disciplines by involving them in doing something that belongs to the core of this discipline, i.e., developing correct logic and computational infrastructure, in a friendly and fun way. One well established fact is that if these young minds are motivated to go for higher education in computing, engineering or STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics)-based programs of study, they can find their own path and would know it better as to what would be a better line of career for them. The presented experiences are related to a set of “Computing Contests” that the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at Qatar University has been holding for the past five years. Initially, it was designed as a website design contest, but after a couple of years’ experience, the interest was observed to be declining. The contest theme was then changed to robotics using the LEGO Mindstorms’ NXT kits and giving simple challenges to the students in which the emphasis was on developing robust logic for computational implementation. Unlike the existing robotic contests in the region, including First LEGO League (FLL), National Robotics Olympiad (NRO), and Bot-Ball, the actual contest track was unknown to the participants until the contest day. This implied that the robots were to be programmed for certain general rules while the actual implementation sequence of the rules was not known. In fact, the emphasis was not given to the mechanical design but on generic sensory-perception based actuation mechanism that was to be programmed in order to solve the given challenge in minimum time.The paper presents results that show a positive change of trend from the schools’ side that reflects the interest taken by the schools, their participation, level of work performed, and what benefits were achieved by the students and their schools. The findings are presented in this paper using quantitative as well as qualitative data and shows that the robotics contests were successful in motivating students to make the computing domain as their major for university studies as well as in making them learn some of the most beneficial skills needed in the engineering and computing programs; objective programming, and outcome-based system design.

The Potential of a First LEGO League Robotics Program in Teaching 21st Century Skills: An Exploratory Study

Business and political leaders in the US call for schools to teach 21st century skills. In the meantime, researchers call for more research to develop curriculum that teach 21st century skills. In this study, the authors examine the experience of a First LEGO League (FLL) robotics team to explore the potential of FLL for teaching 21stcentury skills. We found that the program provided opportunities for learning many 21st century skills such as systems thinking, decision making, problem solving, teamwork, conflict resolution, flexibility, perseverance, and selfmanagement. We also found that instructional strategies such as modeling, coaching, scaffolding, examples and case studies were important in providing successful experience to children. For children to retain and transfer these 21stcentury skills, articulation and reflection are critical.

The Malleability of Spatial Ability Under Treatment of a FIRST LEGO League-Based Robotics Simulation

A stratified random sample of volunteer participants ( N = 75) aged 9 to 14 was drawn from 16 public school districts’ gifted programs, including as many females ( n = 28) and children from groups traditionally underrepresented in gifted programs ( n = 18) as available. Participants were randomly divided into an experimental ( n = 38) and a control group ( n = 37) for an intervention study. All participants took the Cognitive Abilities Test (Form 6) Verbal Battery and the Project TALENT Spatial Ability Assessments. The experimental group participated in a simulation of the FIRST LEGO League (FLL) competition for 20 hr total over five consecutive days. All participants took the spatial measure again. Experimental males evidenced significant and meaningful gains in measured spatial ability (Cohen’s d = .87). Females did not evidence significant gains in measured spatial ability. This may be due to sampling error, gender differences in prior experience with LEGO, or differences in facets of spatial ability in the treatment or measurements.

Communicating Nanoscale Science and Engineering to the General Public

AbstractCommunicating the underlying concepts in nanotechnology to the general public is challenging but essential as its impact on society increases over time. We have created a webzine called Nanooze and a traveling museum exhibition called Too Small to See to help communicate nanoscale science and engineering concepts. Nanooze was launched in 2006 and covers the basic concepts of nanotechnology along with the latest in scientific discoveries and interviews with scientists. Its mission is to excite, educate, and challenge kids age 6 to 10 years old and their teachers. Nanooze covers both the underlying science of nanotechnology and its applications. It has attracted a broad audience and has been one of the core resources to a number of national/international competitions, schools and after-school groups. Surveys of readers reveal that over 50% thought that Nanooze was cool with approximately 21% stating that they visit Nanooze once a month. During the 2006 FIRST Lego League competition, which Nanooze supported, 385,000 hits were recorded in one month indicating its broad reach. Too Small to See is a traveling museum exhibition that immerses visitors in a hands-on interactive experience in nanotechnology. This five thousand square foot exhibition is currently on a national tour after debuting at Epcot, Walt Disney World Resort. Too Small to See takes the visitor from the macroscale world to the nanoscale world through a series of interactive and video experiences using everyday objects as the focal point. Once there, the visitor can play with atoms and take on challenges that illustrate the difficulties of nanotechnology. Summative evaluation has revealed that 60% of the visitors were interested in knowing more about nanotechnology as a result of the exhibits. Over 80% of the visitors surveyed altered their viewpoint of the smallest thing that they could think of from a macroscopic object to a nanoscale object after using the exhibits.

Acquisition of Physics Content Knowledge and Scientific Inquiry Skills in a Robotics Summer Camp

Despite the growing popularity of robotics competitions such as FIRST LEGO League, robotics activities are typically not found in regular K–12 classrooms. We speculate that, among other reasons, limited adoption is due to the lack of empirical evidence demonstrating the effect of robotics activities on curricular goals. This paper presents a mixed methods study exploring the impact of a summer robotics camp on middle school students’ physics content knowledge and scientific inquiry skills. It was found that the camp enhanced students’ physics content knowledge but failed to improve their skills in conducting scientific inquiry. Qualitative data provided an explanation of the findings.