NSF Awards: 1908743
Ed+gineering brought robotics into students' homes during the pandemic. Working in small teams over Zoom, pre-service teachers, engineering undergraduates, and 5th graders designed, built, and coded COVID companion robots. The excitement and relationships developed over the course of the project helped drive preservice teachers' self-efficacy and intention to integrate engineering into their future classrooms while increasing access, equity, and efficacy for the next generation of engineers.
Jennifer Kidd
Master Lecturer
We welcome your feedback on our project and we are interested in learning about your work. In particular, we would love to hear about the following:
1) Developing pre-service teachers' confidence and competence in engineering
2) Supporting interdisciplinary team-work
3) Strategies for helping inservice teachers integrate engineering in preK-6 classrooms
4) Culturally-responsive/community-focused PreK-12 engineering projects
5) Research on preservice teachers' self-efficacy
Rebecca Dovi
Gabriela Rose
What stands out to me is the collaboration between pre-service teachers, children, engineering students, faculty, and parents around an authentic engineering/robotic design challenge. Everyone is involved, and everyone gets something out of it. I love how the Covid companion helps others, a powerful motivator to design.
I wonder how the family involvement can be retained in an ongoing way now that the project is back to a face-to-face club. In our PreK-2 project we have explored creating a family edition of the materials in addition to a classroom edition, as a way to engage parents with their children at home. Another idea we are considering is a family hand-out with a short description of what the children were engaged in, how that helps the child learn and grow, followed by a few suggestions for books to read and follow-up activities.
Ekundayo Shittu
This is an exciting project. I like the innovation behind the switch to virtual during the peak of the pandemic. This is the way to get the young ones excited about engineering and perhaps develop an interest in STEM very early on. The demonstration projects are exciting and, quite frankly, impressive! I voted!!
Jennifer Kidd
Master Lecturer
Ekundayo, thank you so much for your comment and vote on our video, Ed+gineering Brings Robotics Home During COVID. I watched your video: your energy and enthusiasm for your project (and students) is palpable! I love your focus on using engineering to address societal challenges. We both seem to focus on cross-disciplinary partnerships to effect change. I think we are on to something: we can't tackle these systemic issues when we stay in our silos. Your emphasis on empathy and storytelling reminds me of a really neat K-12 project that took a similar approach to elicit interest in engineering among young girls (Using narratives to evoke empathy and support girls' engagement in engineering). If I remember correctly, they found girls were more interested in engineering challenges that had an accompanying narrative that focused on helping specific individuals. Good luck and keep working to change the world!
Shannon Schmoll
I really like that these kids clearly had fun but had a clear purpose behind what they were doing. And the creation and sharing through videos clearly gives them such ownership over their work. With the pandemic changing, do you have plans to continue with a different challenge or purpose?
Jennifer Kidd
Master Lecturer
Shannon, thank you for your post. Yes, our students (like yours!) definitely felt a sense of ownership over their work. That's one interesting finding that came out of our COVID adaptation research. We saw many benefits of students having their own robotics kits and building their own individual robots in their homes. In this situation, students could claim with full authority that they 100% designed and built their robot on their own! Although they received guidance from the collaborating preservice teachers and engineering students via Zoom, the 5th graders were the only ones to put hands on their robots. They could proudly proclaim, "I built my own robot!" We just finished another round of our project this spring, this time back in the schools (in an after-school setting). Instead of COVID companions, the students designed bio-inspired rescue or entertainment robots (e.g. a painting squid robot!). In previous iterations, students worked collaboratively to build a team robot. Based on our COVID research, we decided to have each student build their own robot, but still collaborate with their team to come up with the design. We will need to analyze our data to decide the merits of this approach in the normal face-to-face context. Any suggestions for us?
Your World Building on Mars project clearly generated the same kind of excitement with the kids, and it was so needed during this time when COVID stripped kids of engaging hands-on activities. I love that it can be adapted from grade school through college. Congratulations on your exciting work!
Margo Murphy
Science Instructor
What a great example of pandemic learning!!! I am so impressed with how you were able to turn your project from a one audience in normal times to a whole new audience in at home learning. I have lots questions because I am in year three of a covid classroom teacher and want to understand how this was implemented. Did you have partner schools and teachers that you were already connected to? Was this an enrichment opportunity? In other words.. How did you connect with this particular group of students that were not in the age group you were initially intending to work with?
Jennifer Kidd
Master Lecturer
Hi Margo, thank you so much for your post. Our robotics activity is part of our larger NSF project that partners education and engineering students at Old Dominion University to plan and teach engineering lessons to elementary school students. So, yes have been establishing partnerships with schools in our local area so that our college students have elementary students to teach. In the case of the video you watched, I recruited 5th graders at a nearby school (by Zooming into their math class!) to participate in an after school technology club that my education students help lead. The club is about 10 weeks long during which time the children engage in a variety of technology projects with my students. The engineering students join us for about 4 weeks for this robotics project. During that time the 5th graders worked in small teams with my education and my colleague's engineering students to design, build and code the robots. This happens afterschool on Wednesdays. In Spring 2020 and Spring 2021 we can the club virtually, but this past spring, we are back face-to-face. I'm happy to answer more questions, just let me know!
Kathy Renfrew
Education SPecialist
This project shows the possibilities of strong home-school connections ! I loved seeing the excitement of the chidren as they shared their covid helpers.I am also all about the integration of the disciplines. I am wondering about the preservice teachers, did they an engineering class prior to this happening or were they taking one concurrently? I heard the preservice say they felt more confident as teachers but I would like to know more about their STEM mindset beginning the project.
In the beginning you shared that this was an afterschool STEM Club, so what I thinking about is accessibility and access? Prior to Covid what were the opportunities in regrads to access? What were the costs connected to the program and who paid for them.
As a former classroom teacher I have been thinking about your questions about strategies to integrate in prek-6 classrooms. The first thing that comes to mind is the opportunities the NGSS performance expectations provide for this. When I reflect on your video one PE immediately comes to mind and it is a grade 4 expectation "Apply scientific ideas to design, test, and refine a device that converts energy from one form to another. 4-PS3-4" My thoughts are how might you show teachers you can help them do work that they are expected to do without making more work for them, especially right now!
Jennifer Kidd
Master Lecturer
Hi Kathy, thanks for your post. This collaboration between preservice teachers, engineering students, and 5th graders is part of our larger NSF-funded project. The larger project provides three opportunities for the preservice teachers to partner with engineering students to teach engineering lessons. The robotics project is what we call Collab 2, or the second opportunity for the preservice teachers to engage in the project. Most of the Collab 2 preservice teachers do not have any prior experience with engineering, but a few had participated in Collab 1, where they partner with engineering students and teach a 1 hour lesson to 4th graders focused on an engineering design challenge. In most cases, whether the preservice teachers have their initial exposure to engineering in Collab 1 or Collab 2, they are very unfamiliar with engineering, intimidated by it, and apprehensive about the prospect of teaching an engineering lesson. We found that our Collabs help demystify engineering for the education students and make it feel more accessible, like something they could see themselves teaching in their own future classroom.
Prior to COVID, we ran the afterschool technology club in person at a local school. We recruited 5th graders with the help of the principal and the kids' math teacher. There are costs associated with the program. We purchased enough Hummingbird Bit robotics kits so every student (education, engineering and 5th grader) could have their own kit for the semester. We also purchased craft supplies and hold a family showcase at the end of each year. I also have TAs that help me run the clubs. These costs are covered by our NSF grant. We are lucky to have this funding and it definitely makes it easier to pull this off!
As far as helping teachers integrate, I think you hit on a critical point: how can we help teachers bring these sorts of engineering challenges into their instruction without creating more work for them. We've also been running summer workshops for inservice teachers that focus on cheaper, shorter-term design challenges. We hope to give them a chance to learn and teach each other simple engineering design lessons during the workshop and then send them home with the supplies to try it in their own classrooms. In Virginia, we don't use the NGSS as much because we have our Standards of Learning, but the objectives are very similar, and I agree, we need to show teachers how they can meet these standards through engineering design challenges without too much investment on their part.
Tabatha Rainwater
This is a great project! Its fantastic to see the positive environment you are establishing for your parenting pre-service teachers. If/when you all are planning to go back in person, do you anticipate having the same family presence in person? I'd love to hear about the transition.
Krishna Kaipa
Assistant Professor
Hi Tabatha, Thank you for watching our video and your comments! We did go back in person when we ran another round of our project at the WoW club this spring. Since the robot building activities took place in the school, we lacked the component of "family presence" that was available in the previous semesters when children participated over Zoom from their homes. Having said that, we still had some family presence when we held a three-hour family showcase event during the semester-end, where the kids' parents engaged in many ways ranging from cheering live robot demonstrations on stage presented by their kids to voting on the audience choice award for the best robots and participating in a Sphero-chariot challenge conducted by the instructors and the TAs.
Katherine Isbister
Love this project--seeing what people built, and how excited they were about it, was really heart warming. Loved how it brought families into the mix in a way that didn't seem stressful. Would love more information about what the process was like for the engineering students advancing development of some of the youth concepts. Did they have conversations with the youth and get feedback? And if so, what did they think? Great work!
Katherine
Krishna Kaipa
Krishna Kaipa
Assistant Professor
Hi Katherine,
Thanks for watching our video and your comments! Glad to hear your question about how the engineering students extended the kids' ideas into more advanced robots. The robot design challenge process began with the preservice teachers, engineering students, and the fifth graders in each team collectively brainstorming ideas for a COVID companion robot. It was interesting to see how the kids laid out the desirable traits they wanted in their robot, which narrowed down their animal inspiration, while the engineering students provided insights on limitations and alternatives. The process resulted in teams developing diverse robot designs ranging from parrot-inspired robots to rabbit-inspired, and cat-inspired robots. In their semester-end reflections, the engineering students reported finding value in this process of mixed-aged and cross-disciplinary collaborations as they had the opportunity to hear out and integrate perspectives from outside their field, leading them toward more creative ways of solving their design challenges.
If you are interested in more details, we have a work-in-progress paper in the upcoming ASEE 2022 conference entitled, "Can We Make Our Robot Play Soccer? Influence of Collaborating with Preservice Teachers and Fifth Graders on Undergraduate Engineering Students’ Learning during a Robotic Design Process" that is focused on these aspects.
I watched your project video! really exciting to learn about the theme of campers at Anywear Academy embarking on a mission solving journey to different worlds, and how it was used to inspire computational thinking in middle school girls. What hardware and coding language was used to program and embed the wearable into the costumes? I also saw one of teams using motorized wheeled platforms. What did they use them for? Great project!! I'll post these comments on your video site too!
Katherine Isbister
Brandon Hopson
Awesome work Dr. Kidd! I love to see children gain the opportunity to learn while also fostering their own creativity. I was very impressed.
Latrenda Knighten
Mathematics Content Trainer
Thanks for sharing your project. This project was a win win situation for all involved! The Education students learned valuable lessons, reported an increase in their self-efficacy, and were able to build lasting connections because of the nature of this project. I LOVE that several of the students are parents and saw first hand the impact of early introduction to engineering concepts through the eyes of their own children. It was great to see the footage of the elementary students discussing their robots - I could feel their excitement and enthusiasm and wanted to know more about their robots! The introduction of the project in the home environment made the concepts relevant and meaningful for the families as well and created an experience the entire family could take part in. This is a perfect example of some of the positive things that happened as a result of everyone having to pivot and use creativity during the pandemic.
What measures did you use to measure the pre-service teachers' confidence, self-efficacy, and knowledge of engineering concepts? Was there a pre- and post- instrument involved? Your video mentioned that the robotics project was typically implemented with fifth grade students each year. Compared to previous years, did you notice an increase in student engagement and/or family involvement during the pandemic version of the project?
Thanks again.
Jennifer Kidd
Master Lecturer
Hi Latrenda, Thank you for your comments! Yes, we were pleasantly surprised by all the unexpected positive benefits that came from our COVID adaptation. We did use pre-post measures and we also employed comparison groups. We do have an article that came out recently that talks a little more about our instruments and results.
Cima, F., Pazos, P., Kidd, J., Gutierrez, K., Ringleb, S., Ayala, O., & Kaipa, K. (2022). Enhancing Preservice Teachers’ Intention to Integrate Engineering through a Cross-Disciplinary Model. Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER), 11(2), Article 7.
https://doi.org/10.7771/2157-9288.1338
I would say that families were more involved during the virtual implementation we did in Spring 2020 and Spring 2021 (they almost had to be!), but I wouldn't say that the kids were more engaged during these virtual sessions. On the contrary, I would say that engagement was harder in the online context and not all kids turned on their cameras, interacted actively, and completed their robots. In contrast, in the f2f version of the club, almost all of the kids are highly engaged and complete their robots. However, that said, many kids did fully engage online and this project came at a time when children were starved for this type of one-on-one, interactive, creative, hands-on, real world endeavor. Do we prefer to do this project in person? You bet!
Latrenda Knighten
Latrenda Knighten
Mathematics Content Trainer
Jennfer,
Thanks so much for your comprehensive response and for sharing the article. I agree with you that children were "starved" for activities such as those in your project during the pandemic. Even though the parents/families were a "captive" audience due to the pandemic, the benefits they gained from their participation will stick with them for a long time.
Thanks again,
Latrenda
Margo Murphy
Science Instructor
I find this such a great example of responding to pandemic learning. Am I correct in that you working primarily with students that self-select through a club model for this project? Is there a goal to make this more widely available to others? I am also trying to understand how are pre-service teachers participate. The video clearly showed some deep learning for these pre-service teachers. Are they helping to design and implement the club activity? Is there a goal that they will implement this in their eventual classroom or just build the confidence and skills to design and implement other kinds of STEM learning? I am trying to put the pieces together. Thanks!
Jennifer Kidd
Master Lecturer
Hi Margo, glad to have you back! Yes, I recruited the kids through their math teacher at school. This spring we could not accommodate all the kids who wanted to participate it was very hard to turn some away. I'd love to figure out a model for providing this opportunity for more children. I would certainly encourage my teacher education colleagues to consider a similar model. Yes, my education students help to make some decisions about the activities within the club and we reflect together after every session as we think ahead to the next session. The goal is for the preservice teachers to gain competence and confidence with engineering so that they will integrate engineering in their future classrooms. We are aspiring to help them teach engineering-focused lessons during the regular school day. Working with these motivated children in a more informal and low-risk context gives them to space to explore, make mistakes and gain confidence while seeing first hand how engineering can create opportunities for exciting, empowering, interdisciplinary learning opportunities.
Margo Murphy
Florence Sullivan
This continues to be an outstanding project, and, if anything, the pandemic pivot seems to have improved the project, and by that I mean the involvement of the parents. It is key that parents understand the importance of computer science and engineering as PK-6 curricular topics. Without parental support, we will have difficulty making headway into the early curriculum. Here, the ed+gineering project is demonstrating how that family support can be built. I really loved how in some families it became a family project - how must of the animaltronics were of pets, and how basic supplies found around the house were re-purposed into the robotic bodies and devices. This is a very special project that keeps on growing. Way to go, Jennifer, Krishnan and all.
Jennifer Kidd
Jennifer Kidd
Master Lecturer
Thank you Florence. We are so lucky to have your support and wisdom to guide us!
Kristen Napolitano
Wow! Thank you for sharing this work -- it is great to see children engaged in engineering even at a time when learning and activities were happening in isolation. I love the "Covid Companion" idea-- how did children come up with this idea? Do the facilitators use a problem identification/solving framework to get students thinking critically about the problems they plan to address through their engineering design?
Jennifer Kidd
Jennifer Kidd
Master Lecturer
Thanks for your post. We don't have a framework like that. Do you have one to recommend?
Nuria Jaumot-Pascual
I really enjoyed your video. Loved how the kids engaged in building their COVID companions and the teachers-in-training gained self-confidence that they can apply what they learned with larger groups of kids. Have you considered doing some research on what happens with the parents who engaged in the project?
Jennifer Kidd
Master Lecturer
Thanks for your comment, Nuria. That's a great topic - we might have to tackle that for our next project, but I think you are on to something. I could see first-hand the difference involved parents were making in these kids' projects!
Nuria Jaumot-Pascual
Rhonda Christensen
Wow, what a powerful project. I loved seeing and hearing from the students. They were clearly engaged and excited. I will look for research findings about your project.
Krishna Kaipa
Assistant Professor
Thanks for your comments, Rhonda. I am glad you liked our work! Here is a recent SITE conference paper based on our past implementation that provides some insights into research findings on one of the collaboration models (presented in the video) of our overall project--
Kidd, J., Kaipa, K., Gutierrez, K., Pazos, P., Ayala, O. & Ringleb, S. (2020). “Zooming In” on Robotics during COVID-19: A Preservice Teacher, an Engineering Student, and a 5th Grader Engineer Robotic Flowers via Zoom. In E. Langran (Ed.), Proceedings of SITE Interactive 2020 Online Conference (pp. 503-512). Online: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). Retrieved May 17, 2022 from https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/218194/.
Laura Ettinger
I LOVE this project! There are so many layers to it. It's wonderful how relationships are providing motivation for pre-service teachers and students at a variety of levels. I also love how the project is finding a pandemic silver lining - using the pandemic as a way to encourage students to see and understand the value of engineering in their - and others' - everyday lives. Bravo!
Jennifer Kidd
Julie Robinson
I love how many wonderful, integrated aspects there are to this project. The collaboration among children, pre-service teachers, and engineers in a relevant context that also bridges remote and hands-on instruction - and brings family connections in as well! - is so powerful and engaging.