The ER4STEM project was highly successful, exceeding many of its aims. That success is down to the hard work, commitment and ambition of all project partners. Over 4500 young people between the ages of 6 and 19 years old participated in ER4STEM activities across Europe. We have created an activity plan template for use by teachers and those interested in running robotics workshops, which provide pedagogic guidance on the design of the workshops. This activity plan template has been used in the design of workshops by project partners and teachers to create integrated STEM workshops involving robots. Activities created foster positive attitudes towards STEM subjects, teamwork, creativity, critical thinking, reflection and other 21st Century skills. These activities are available for free in the er4stem.eu repository, for anyone to use and edit for their context.
The ER4STEM evaluation is the first large scale collection and analysis of qualitative data on educational robotics activities in action. Prior to this, the majority of research has focused on quantitative measures of attitudes and learning outcomes, without examining the processes which learners engage in with the robots and with each other. By observing workshops and conferences in action, it has been possible to draw out design principles for successful workshop design and uncover the most effective aspects of workshops in developing young people’s interest in STEM and essential 21st Century Skills such as teamwork and creativity. This has been disseminated through scientific and non-scientific events and publications are in progress.
Bringing these activity plans together is the ER4STEM curriculum, which provides multiple routes through which to engage in educational robotics activities in STEM. It provides both structure and flexibility. It spans multiple ages, multiple technologies and we believe it to be the first of its kind. Providing multiple ways for young people to engage with robotics was a key aim of the ER4STEM project. The ER4STEM curriculum and repository illustrate various ways to inspire young people in STEM through robotics, importantly providing multiple examples of the use of creative arts. Finally, ER4STEM was one of six finalists for the European Digital Skills in Education Award (2018) from 102 applications. This clearly shows the importance of the achievements of this project.
Two new robotics tools were created during the project for use by young people. The first tool, Hedgehog, an educational robotics controller, facilitates the control of robots for students of different age levels through both textual and visual programming support. For advanced students, Hedgehog’s open source ecosystem allows delving into subjects such as microcontroller programming or cooperative robots as well. Hedgehog has been used in numerous workshops and also in robotics competitions with great success. The second tool, SLurtle world, a 3D virtual world environment which is run on a school’s network (ensuring security). In the virtual world, students are represented as avatars, through which they can act and interact with each other, programme SLurtles to construct objects and programme those objects to be interactive.
The project repository,
https://repository.er4stem.com/home(öffnet in neuem Fenster) will stay active and open for educators, teachers, parents and robotics enthusiasts to access all the great results of the projects. This legacy of the project will be a more nuanced and research informed approach to the design of educational robotics activities. Teachers will be able to use the project outcomes to design their own activities and continue to inspire young people within STEM through robotics.
