Teaching High School Students about Autonomous Aerial Robots
The aim of this proposal is to test the hypothesis that we can prepare high school teachers to teach students about autonomous aerial robots on their own, at scale by 1) providing a project-based curriculum targeted at the high school level on an open-source low-cost autonomous robot with few infrastructure requirements; 2) providing remote professional development workshops for teachers; and 3) pairing teachers with Brown students familiar with the curriculum who will provide help and technical support. We will study the interactions between teachers and curriculum materials, tools, and Brown students who facilitate the learners' conceptual development, and what characteristics our online PD and remote support give rise to these interactions. Our work will assess each of these three interventions by assessing teacher content knowledge as well as self-efficacy. We will also assess the effectiveness with which we can engage students in both urban and suburban districts through hands-on remote learning curricula that emphasize physical hardware, in the hands of the students as well as via remote laboratories. This work has the potential to directly benefit students in Rhode Island, consistent with President Paxson's commitment to Providence public schools. Moreover this funding will provide critical preliminary work enabling us to apply for follow-on funding for larger expansions from NSF and industry resources to grow our project to a nationwide and international effort to teach students about autonomous robotics.
PI: Stefanie Tellex, Associate Professor of Computer Science
Co-PI: Diane Silva Pimentel, Senior Lecturer in Education