Kist, Alexander A. and Maxwell, Andrew and Gibbings, Peter and Fogarty, Roderick and Midgley, Warren and Noble, Karen (2011) Engineering for primary school children: learning with robots in a remote access laboratory. In: 39th SEFI Annual Conference: Global Engineering Recognition, Sustainability and Mobility (SEFI 2011), 27-30 Sep 2011, Lisbon, Portugal.
Abstract
Benefits of Remote Access Laboratory technology have been widely acknowledged in engineering education literature. This paper introduces a cross disciplinary project involving academic from the Faculty of Engineering & Surveying and the Faculty of Education and demonstrates how the benefit of remote access technologies can be extended to other non engineering disciplines. Remote access technology was employed in a workshop for primary school children called Robot RAL-ly. The participants designed a racing course for remote-control robots, and then moved to a different room to manoeuvre the robots through other teams‟ courses using the RAL technology. At the end of the workshop, the children participated in a co-constructed focus group discussion. The key focus of this paper is to describe the Robot RAL-ly initiative from a multi-disciplinary perspective and highlight positive outcomes for both disciplines. The project demonstrates that cross disciplinary projects benefit all parties. Engaging primary school children with Engineering topics not only provides valuable insights for engineering education but also helps to make engineering more accessible to potential future students.
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