2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This GIFTS paper will describe how Just-in-Time learning can be used as a technique in a first-year design-build robotics course to encourage student motivation, learning, and creativity. Just-in-Time (JIT) learning is an instructional strategy focused on meeting the learner's need only when it arises rather than on a scheduled basis. One of the benefits of this strategy is to not overwhelm learners with content that does not meet their immediate learning needs. Additionally, this strategy is hypothesized to be highly motivating to students because they clearly perceive the need to know the material. This paper explores using just-in-time learning for unique programming skills in a project-based course where students design, build, and program an autonomous robot. The motivation for this paper is to share a strategy for how JIT learning can be used in a design-build course to motivate student learning and consistently teach important skills while still providing choice and flexibility in an open-ended project within the context of project- and problem-based learning. The activities that use JIT learning can then be adapted by other instructors of project-based courses looking to improve student motivation and creativity.

In an honors first-year engineering project course at a large Midwestern university, teams of students design and build an autonomous robot to perform a series of tasks on an interactive robotics course. The robots are programmed using a custom controller and must be designed within a specified size and budget. The robot must navigate the course using input about its location, orientation, and relation to obstacles. The robots can navigate using a custom positioning system and hardware devices such as digital optosensors and microswitches.

The design project students must complete includes three exploration activities to introduce them to important navigation concepts that they can choose to use and adapt for their robot design. The activities include an introduction to motors and microswitches, using line following and shaft encoding to navigate, and real-time navigation using a custom positioning system. To complete these exploration activities, students are provided with a base robot which was built specifically for the activities and uses the same custom controller.

Students' progress on the project is assessed via four performance tests where their robot must navigate to and complete a set of tasks. The timeline for the exploration activities and performance tests is structured to employ the JIT learning strategy. The exploration activities and performance tests are interleaved in such a way as to expose students to the necessary concepts prior to expecting their robot to complete a performance test where the concept could be useful. This motivates students to use the skills they have just learned in their final designs and even motivates reuse of modular software components they developed in the explorations on their own robot. As an example, students learn how to navigate using line following in the second exploration activity and are immediately able to use this technique using paths drawn on the course to navigate to tasks in the following performance test.

This paper will further discuss details on how the JIT learning strategy is implemented in a design-build project course to motivate student learning and success. It will also describe how choice is preserved in student decision making for an open-ended project while also guaranteeing students learn the desired skills. Additionally, data from an end-of-course survey from the 2022 robot design-build course will be analyzed to investigate how students perceive the exploration activities. These data were collected from approximately 250 students. A survey question asking students which course assignments they found useful or not useful will be analyzed for perception about the explorations. Responses to an open-ended question on the course as a whole will also be analyzed for positive and negative feedback on the JIT learning strategy. This feedback will inform how JIT learning will be integrated into this robotics course in the future. Future work in this area would be to analyze student motivation and performance in a project-based course using JIT learning compared to a more traditional strategy where students learn the needed concepts for the course before the start of the open-ended portion of the course.