Robot World—Technology Infrastructure for Project-Based Learning

Dates

January 2002 — January 2004

Principal Investigators

Professor John Williams (Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering)
Professor Alex Slocum (Department of Mechanical Engineering)
Professor Martin Culpepper (Department of Mechanical Engineering)

Goal

The focus of Robot World is on two MIT courses that use the building of robots and robot software to motivate students to learn various aspects of engineering. This project takes an engineering product development approach to assembling customer needs and deploying a range of web services to meet those needs.

Overview

Robot World systematizes the deployment and running of courses that use design projects as a vehicle for teaching engineering. Project-based learning courses pose teaching and logistic challenges in that they typically use hardware and software laboratories and have student teams that operate with a high degree of autonomy.

Project-based design courses are gaining popularity at MIT and elsewhere because of the educational benefits they deliver. However, there are specific problems in the running of design/laboratory courses, and in general they often require heroics on the part of the instructors. We believe that we can systematize the processes by which project-based design courses are delivered, and by leveraging Web-based services we can improve the learning experience for the student and also utilize faculty time more efficiently. Since robotics courses are some of the most successful project-based design courses at MIT we will use them as our initial test-bed. One particular opportunity is that the system will allow for off-campus experts in the classroom.

Initially, Robot World benefited courses 2.007, one of the most popular of the robot courses, 1.124 a popular web system design course, 2.000 a popular course on "How Things Work", and 6.034 a popular artificial intelligence course. We also believe there can be a beneficial symbiosis between hardware focused courses such as 2.007 and software focused courses, such as 1.124, whereby we can enrich the experience of both sets of students. This could be a model for integration of other "separate" courses at MIT.

More Project Details from the Principal Investigators

Good design does not just happen, it is planned and executed in a systematic way, with random "Aha!" thoughts interspersed as catalysts to the creation of the product. While students may need a high degree of autonomy they nevertheless need both technical and time management guidance in order to pass through the necessary milestones on schedule. Ideally, courses also need to provide "apprenticeship" experience for the student so that they can "see" how good designers function.

Robot World will be initially deployed and tested in courses where students are given a broad ill-defined task, such as "Design a robot to compete in a competition," which encourages them to explore different strategies and concepts using analytical, simulation and hands-on experiments within a bounded design space. While these courses have a single overarching goal, they are typically organized into a series of knowledge check points that must be attained in order to reach the final goal. Each check point represents an integrated, but limited, piece of knowledge that must be grasped and understood and then utilized to make a design decision. A key need in project courses is to keep the student on track and take action when the student falls behind the planned trajectory.

Educational Significance

Typically, design courses have been run on an ad-hoc basis in terms of a general outline is provided with supporting lectures and occasional problem sets to gage competence. However, students' progress and true understanding of the material is difficult to evaluate because of the large value of (# students) x (amount of meaningful design detail) / (# available instructor hours). This means that many final designs are presented in a manner that may look good, but have deep fundamental flaws where if the student is not made aware of them, they might continue their "worst practice" in industry and cause pain and suffering. We believe that the online Design Notebook concept can facilitate improved interaction with human on-campus advisors and with expert off-campus advisors.

This project will produce a core asset of robot specific content, tagged in a manner such that it can be re-used and repurposed. This content can form a valuable asset to drive the scale-up of the Robot World community to include other universities. Furthermore, it can function as a template for mapping and tagging content in other domains.

We believe that there is an opportunity for MIT to take a world leadership position in the use of Design Project Based Learning. At MIT we have already done significant research in how design should be integrated into the curriculum and the members of this team have been part of several major efforts in this area, including, Design Studio of the Future, the Realization Consortium, ECCEL and CIPD.

Project-based design courses are gaining popularity at MIT and elsewhere because of the educational benefits they deliver. However, there are specific problems in the running of design/laboratory courses, and in general they often require heroics on the part of the instructors. We believe that we can systematize the processes by which project based design courses are delivered, and by leveraging Web-based services we can improve the learning experience for the student and also utilize faculty time more efficiently. Since robotics courses are some of the most successful project based design courses at MIT we will use them as our initial test-bed. One particular opportunity is that the system will allow for off-campus experts in the classroom.

"This project will produce a core asset of robot specific content, tagged in a manner such that it can be re-used and repurposed. This content can form a valuable asset to drive the scale-up of the Robot World community to include other universities. Furthermore, it can function as a template for mapping and tagging content in other domains. We believe that there is an opportunity for MIT to take a world leadership position in the use of Design Project Based Learning." — Alex Slocum

Project Output

Presentations

Presentation to CMI Cambridge colleagues of RobotWorld. Cambridge University June 17.

2nd International Conference on the Virtual University under the theme: Internet: a Pedagogical Tool for Distance Learning. Algeria from 15-17th May 2002.

Seminar at Meditech on RobotWorld, 6/27/2002.

E-Learning World, Tokyo, Japan, 7/22/2002.

Links

RobotWorld

Course 2.007 - Design and Manufacturing I