Discussion
As the ACM/IEEE Computing Curricula 2001 (CC2001) guidelines begin to be integrated into Computer Science departments' curricula across the country, as new robotics kits become less expensive, and as interest in robotics concepts mounts in the computer science education community, we believe that the time is ripe to address the question of how to effectively integrate robotics as a unifying theme throughout the CC2001. By using the phrase "unifying theme," we do not mean to imply that robotics subsumes computer science. However, we do feel that robots are thematic in the sense that they pose and illustrate many of the problems that are addressed in the core knowledge areas of the CC2001. Our goals are to prepare exercises using robotics-inspired concepts to teach many knowledge areas of the CC2001, to develop all necessary supporting software for the exercises, and to rigorously evaluate the efficacy of robotics-inspired projects in the CC2001. We aim to demonstrate that LEGO MindStorms robots can be a cost-effective platform for teaching a significant portion of CC2001 and for expanding students' appreciation of the results from advanced research areas in computer science. We selected the MindStorms platform for four reasons:
- A single MindStorms kit costs approximately $200 and thus is one-quarter the cost of a HandyBoard-based [17] robot kit and one-tenth the cost of an ActivMedia-based [19] robot kit - two commonly used platforms in colleges.
- The MindStorms platform is a suite of reusable snap-together sensors, effectors, and a programmable control unit that can support a wide variety of robotics projects. The control unit can be used in autonomous mode (i.e. the robot™s behavior depends only on the program loaded into its memory) or in direct-control mode (a control program on a desktop computer broadcasts instructions to the robot). Work by Dr. Klassner also indicates that the control unit's firmware can be extended to support extra infrared (IR) networking.
- Many students have played with LEGO building blocks as children, and therefore they are intrigued with working on LEGO-based classroom projects.
- MindStorms robots have an active hobbyist community that has developed freeware programming tools in languages, from C to Visual Basic, that can serve as the basis for more robust support software for use in programming assignments.
As part of our research to use robotics to enhance the core of CC2001 curricula and to support transfer of advanced research results, we propose to develop approximately 50 exercises that use MindStorms equipment to motivate and support active student learning. We use isexercisels to mean either a laboratory project that is done with the assistance of the instructor or a programming assignment that is done either solo or in small teams. We have identified seven out of the fourteen knowledge areas in the CC2001 which contain topics that could be pedagogically motivated or enhanced through robotics-oriented projects: Programming Fundamentals, Algorithms and Complexity, Programming Languages, Architecture, Operating Systems, Intelligent Systems, and Net-centric Computing. All of the areas targeted in this project contain material that the committee has designated as core (rather than elective) topics. Thus, advanced and elective courses in a CC2001-based curriculum can seamlessly take advantage of students' experiences in the core topics when exploring advanced research results in the context of MindStorms robotics.