Date of Award

5-2022

Document Type

Thesis

Abstract

As robotics is becoming more popular across the United States, there is little research to show the long term effects of robotics participation on students both within and outside of school. Through examining literature surrounding robotics, known themes of collaboration, problem solving, and an obvious growth in areas surrounding STEM have been identified. This qualitative study took the general information provided by literature and focused on a specific case study of two fifth grade elementary teams from Woodview Elementary School in Nappanee, Indiana. Using a technique called methods triangulation, new emerging themes were found between obtaining eight of the students' engineering notebooks from four previous academic years, observing a competition in December of 2021, and analyzing a newly produced interview of robotics judges from the Eaglebots competition. The themes showed students developments of their social skills, character development, and new learning goals that centered an ongoing process involving failure. These findings point towards the benefits of robotics being far reaching and lasting.

Included in

Education Commons

Share

COinS