VEX Robotics Competition STEM Summer Camp for High School Students: An Engineering Approach

Authors

Tang Dan, Ryan

Abstract

Although the VEX Robotics Competition provides a very challenging STEAM engineering challenge for students all over the world. However, many teams lack the knowledge, experience, or resources necessary to compete efficiently and effectively. In many cases, the instructor placed in charge of the teams does not have a background in engineering or have the knowledge necessary to teach students the information needed. Consequently, students in these teams are faced with even greater difficulty as they would need to allocate most of the limited time to learn what is necessary to compete. This creates a major problem as many teams start at the beginning of the school year where tournaments are only two months away, giving them very limited time to prepare. As a result of this, many students perceive the engineering and STEAM-related fields of VEX Robotics Competition as too difficult and challenging. This project assesses the development of a STEM summer camp structure for high school students using an integrated engineering approach. In following an engineering approach, the program is developed to focus only on Robotics (Mechatronic) Engineering introductory core course topics. By doing so, this program was developed around introducing high school students to robotics engineering with a primary common goal of competing in the VEX Robotics Competition. The VEX Robotics International Competition, presented by the Robotics Engineering and Competition (REC) Foundation, works to provide pre-college students with an engineering challenge in STEM Education. The goal of this competition is to promote STEM to students and learning communities internationally and aid in the development of skills such as teamwork, communication, leadership, and presentation. The paper is designed to focus on the Content, Assessment, and Pedagogy of the summer camp program through an integrated engineering education design approach. The concept portion of the paper discusses the target domain, target content, and a pre-defined structure of course outcomes. The section also focuses on analyzing the salient characteristics of intended learners and the intersection of knowledge-centered and learner-centered pedagogical approaches. The Assessment section of the project focuses on the methods of assessment used in the summer camp following the Anderson and Krathwohl Taxonomy approach as well as the Authentic Assessment Criteria by Edmund Hansen. Finally, the pedagogy section of the paper focuses on the course syllabus and individual lesson plan development. The development of the pedagogical methods will be done with the structure of teaching and learning in the book, “Making Learning Whole,” by David Perkins.