The nuts and bolts of robotics in k-12 classrooms: A literature synthesis

Increasingly, over the last two decades, robotics has been used in pre-college classrooms as well as extracurricular programs as an active learning approach to engage and challenge students with STEM concepts. Recent studies have taken comprehensive approaches to understand and synthesize benefits of robotics education with respect to general effectiveness, students' learning and transfer skills, creativity and motivation, and diversity and broadening participation. Literature suggests that educational robotics is successful in enhancing effectiveness, learning, and motivation for some. However, work remains to be done in increasing the diversity of student participants and developing methods to broaden participation. This work in progress paper aims to take a step back from the established benefits in order to categorize unique ways that robotics education is presented in and out of the classroom. Results from this review provide the impetus for investigating novel approaches to incorporate robotics into the pre-engineering classroom for better impact with underrepresented groups in engineering.