This Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Phase II project uses an iterative design research method to investigate the technical and curricular innovations need to maximize the algebra learning value of educational robotics. The research objectives of this project address: 1) software tools to make core algebra concepts accessible and useful in a robotics context; 2) activity design; 3) curricular architecture; and 4) evaluation, including summative evaluation of learning outcomes.
If successful, this SBIR Phase II project will lead to products enabling over a million young people to gain confidence and conceptual grounding in algebra. The project will help to break down the artificial and detrimental wall between school mathematics and the tools and concepts that underlie the information economy. Finally, this research will demonstrate advances in the structure of learning environments, showing how rigorous learning can be more portable, more individualized, and more interwoven with creativity and play.
"This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)."
Algebra Immersion Robotics National Science Foundation Award IIP-0924706 Organization: Tertl Studos LLC PI: Richard C. Carter Algebra Immersion Robotics has designed, prototyped and tested an educational robotics programming platform that includes an integrated set of math tools. The project has developed a framework and partial contents for a supplemental mathematics curriculum, RobotMath, for use with middle and high school students to provide alternative pathways to success with algebra. Students are presented with robotics programming challenges for which they must use algebra to get their robots to perform behaviors from following someone around a room, to drawing letters on the floor, to playing tag. The programming environment is designed for easy access and use. Abstract mathematical ideas suddenly become ways to make things happen in the world. Variables, functions, and graphs become dynamic tools for controlling robots in real time. Mathematics comes alive as the impact of changing the value of a variables or modifying a function can be directly experienced as it is happening. As one 6th grader said with delight when he discovered that he could use negative numbers to make his robot move backwards, "Mrs. Smith never told us about this!" The project work included: The development of 50 challenge and reference activity cards as well as student lab sheets as prototypes for a multi-layered robotics math curriculum to support differentiated math and programming instruction. A robot math programming environment that allows students to have their robots interact with their environment through a variety of sensors and emitters (e.g. distance, floor texture and touch sensors, sound generators and audio clip players, lights with variable intensity and color) Web based dynamic function, graph, and table tools designed as linked mathematical representations. A Web based animated on-screen robot for simulation that can take on different character skins. The ability of students to create custom robot commands These prototype materials were developed in the context of afterschool workshops, and summer camp programs for students in grades 6-9, a high school robotics club, and integration into a high school mathematics class in preparation for developing a high school robotics based math course.
