474 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION, VOL. 47, NO. 4, NOVEMBER2004 Robotics Courses for Children as a Motivation Tool: The Chilean Experience Javier Ruiz-del-Solar, Senior Member, IEEE, and Roberto Avilés Abstract—Encouraging children’s interest in science and tech- nology, as well as increasing their technological literacy, may be regarded as one of the educational paradigms of this century. The authors of this paper, affiliated with the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Chile, Santiago, have designed schemes to contribute to both goals and set guidelines for curric- ular and extracurricular school activities related to technology. In this context, this paper reviews their experience concerning prac- tical robotics courses for children developed since 2000. More than 700 children and 90 school teachers have already attended these robotics courses, and the model is now being implemented in sev- eral schools and institutions in Chile. The robotics courses evolved to their present form from ideas developed during the late 1990s, mostly in the United States. Some preliminary assessment data is presented to support this approach. Current projects are also out- lined. It is believed that the authors’ experience might be of interest to engineering schools elsewhere. Index Terms—BEAM (Biology, Electronics, Aesthetics and Me- chanics), LEGO robotics, robotics as a motivation tool for children. I. INTRODUCTION T HE AIM of this paper is to share experience derived from working with school children using robotics as a tool for fostering their interest in science and technology. Robotics is a highly motivating activity for children. It allows them to ap- proach technology both amusingly and intuitively, while dis- covering the underlying science principles. Indeed, robotics has emerged as a useful tool in education since, unlike many others, it provides the place where fields or ideas of science and tech- nology intersect and overlap. From this starting point, a range of activities have been developed largely through practical robotics courses with the long-term goal of motivating children to pursue university careers in science and technology, to increase their technological literacy, and to have, at least, technology-friendly adults. The authors’ experience started in 1999, when facing the challenge of designing new and attractive laboratory work for undergraduate students at their engineering school. They thought, possibly, that original and well-designed experiments could become, in their simpler versions, tools to illustrate what engineering means and does in answer to legitimate questions posed by talented children and high-school students visiting the campus. Manuscript received March 13, 2003; revised October 16, 2003. This work was supported in part by the Fundación Andes, Chile, and the Technological In- ternship Program of Comisión Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONICYT), Chile. The authors are with the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Chile, Santiago 837-0451, Chile (e-mail: jruizd@ing.uchile.cl). Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TE.2004.825063 They first started working with school children in solar en- ergy experiments, which later was connected to the robotics work of Tilden [1], then at Los Alamos National Laboratories. Thus, they set the basis of their first practical courses on Biology, Electronics, Aesthetics, and Mechanics (BEAM) robotics, car- ried out in October 2000 and January 2001. Motivated by the positive results of these experiences, they then explored the use of the Parallax Board of Education [2] in a practical course for school teachers during July 2001. In this course, the Parallax board was used for teaching the essential elements of data ac- quisition, sensors, and robotics. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cam- bridge, experience in developing the Intelligent Brick for the LEGO MindStorms set as an expression of the “constructionist learning” ideas of Papert and collaborators of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory [3]–[5] widened the scope. Practical ways developed in the Robotics Academy at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, to work with children using the LEGO MindStorms set [6] as a tool in education, presented an interesting path to follow. Thus, several practical courses of robotics were offered, using LEGO MindStorms during 2002, 2003, and 2004. The urgent need to educate in science and technology has to be understood in the context of a developing country like Chile. Regardless of the considerable investment in education during the last decade, these school students still perform poorly on the average when compared with those from developed countries [7], [8]. Although Chile ranks reasonably well in some areas of the basic sciences, the results are not encouraging in technology when measured by the number of published papers [9] or the number of patents [10]. A key policy to improve awareness and opportunities in science and technology is sustained investment in the use of information technologies applied to education [11]. The authors have chosen to focus their efforts on establishing new technological spaces for the younger students and oppor- tunities for their mentors. So far, more than 700 children and 90 school teachers have attended at least one of the courses on robotics, lasting from two to five days. As a side effect, some Chilean schools are already planning to set their own robotics laboratories under the authors’ guidance. Thus, other engineering schools can reproduce such highly rewarding experiences and strengthen their communities’ potential. The basic elements seem to be motivation, a solid background in engineering, and the will to learn through the process of working with children. Several initiatives have been carried out in different countries with the goal of fostering the interest of children in science and 0018-9359/04$20.00 © 2004 IEEE