2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Robotics is a highly multidisciplinary area of study, with introduction to robotics taking many forms at different universities. ROS (Robot Operating System), a middleware package used in physical and simulated robotic systems and sensors is often used in robotics curriculum to prepare students for the many robotics industry positions and research careers that utilize this middleware. Learning ROS can at times be non-intuitive and overwhelming for students. Limited online resources exist to help students learn ROS asynchronously, and none have studied how students perceived self efficacy in tackling future robotics project changes.

Asynchronous tutorials help students learn material that would take too much time to step through in class, enhancing the principles taught. They can help students troubleshoot specific issues they run into, allow students to go at their own pace, and allow flexibility in how students approach different challenges. In this Introduction to Robotics course, over three years, tutorials to learn ROS have been part of homework assignments and now part of lab sections (for more in person assistance). These tutorials and further, challenges of the midterm and final project, aim to rapidly form the foundational skills and knowledge to use ROS in both simple exercises and establish self-efficacy of students in tackling future robotics projects.

The challenge when designing and implementing these tutorials is how much guidance to provide. These tutorials began as extensions of ROS tutorials provided by Open Robotics (a nonprofit that updates and maintains ROS), but over three years have developed into highly structured labs, with more step-by-step guidance. Throughout this evolution, we have collected (and are collecting), with IRB, subjective and objective measures of robotics interest and self efficacy.

This paper discusses the student feedback, student performance, and practical benefits and limitations of these different levels of guidance for learning ROS and for tutorial development in general. Lessons learned will be discussed including: pitfalls in developing inquiry-based learning tools, types of asynchronous support needed with different levels of guidance, perceptions of student performance benefits versus self-efficacy development, and advice when developing sequential tutorials for learners with different educational backgrounds. These will be discussed in the specific contexts of the last three years of these tutorial’s evolution, emphasizing the pros/cons of each method.