An Action Research on the Application of
Anchored Instruction in Lego Robot Course of
Active Exploring and Problem Solving Skill
錨式教學法應用於國小生樂高機器人主動
探索與解決問題能力學習之行動研究
李鎮亦 屏東教育大學資訊科學系 [email protected] 陳世宏 屏東教育大學資訊科學系 [email protected] 陳皆良 屏東教育大學資訊科學系 [email protected] 施弼耀 屏東教育大學資訊科學系摘要
近年來，教育逐漸走向以學生為中心，提倡教導學生帶得走的能力，而這其中 特別強調的是學生在學習活動中能主動進行探索和解決問題。本研究作者以情境學 習的概念實施以影片為基礎的錨式教學，於作者所任教的樂高機器人班進行行動研 究，試圖解決學生過去被動式學習的問題，並觀察學生在使用錨式情境教學前後的 學習狀況差異。 結果發現使用錨式教學能改善學生積極主動探討樂高機器人功能與解決所遇到 問題的學習態度，並且在情境中融入學生生活中常接觸的題材時（例如：憤怒鳥、 賽德克巴萊、變形金剛等），能使學生更容易融入故事情結，有效增強學生的參與， 並提升學習成效，改善過去無目的的被動式學習所產生的問題。Abstract
In recent years, the educational's trend is towards student-centered curriculum, with particular emphasis on developing skills to explore and to solve problems actively.
1. INTRODUCTION
Many researchers had stated it's increasingly important for teachers to help students develop skills to solving problems, and this had been the ultimate educational goal since several years ago. In recent years, researches has shown that robots can support learning and are capable of promote children to understand physical and mathematical concepts, to makes them have active and constructive learning (Mitnik, Nussbaum & Soto, 2008). The Lego Mindstorms NXT is considered the widely used educational tool, which has been employed to introduce problem solving, teach basic and engineering technologies (Jimenez, Bravo & Bacca, 2010; Behrens, Atorf, Schwann, Neumann, Schnitzler, Balle, Herold, Telle, Noll, Hameyer & Aach, 2010).
And according to Fenwick (2003) knowledge's acquirement always occurs when someone experiences in a particular situation since Brown, Collins & Duguid (1989) had indicated the situation is indivisible from people's cognition. So it's meaningful for authors, as practicing teachers, to create the appropriate conditions for students to been immersed in the NXT's learning environment, to promote their interest in exploration and higher-order thinking.
The purpose of the present study aims to conduct an action research to examine the benefits of the application of Anchored Instruction, as a student-centered situated learning approach, in motivating students in the NXT's classes, seeing how can the pedagogy improve their learning, helping them to use learning resources actively to solving problems include basic kinematics and programming to become independent learners.
2. Literature Review
LEGO NXT Mindstorms
Lego Mindstorms NXT is a programmable robotics kit, released by Lego Group in 2006. It's designed specifically for teachers for educational purpose, and for people who are aged 8 and up, to create robotics toys by using the various components with programming software.
The kit contains more then 600 elements for creating robots, including the most important programmable brick called micro-computer, servo motors for driving robots, and several kinds of sensors to detect and measure signals like light level, volume level and distance etc.. Other components such as gears, levers, pegs, axles, wheels, tracks and tires are providing for constructing the mechanical structures of the creations.
Lego Mindstorms Education NXT software called NXT-G is a very simple graphic programs comes bundled with the NXT. It is adequate for NXT's basic programming such as dealing sensor's inputs, driving motors, calculating.
The kit has been successfully used in many engineering educations and programming courses (Elmore & Seiler, 2008; Williams, 2003; Kim & Jeon, 2009). Anchored Instruction
embedded in authentic contexts to make students to be immersed in the problem contexts. Its main goal is to create various interesting contexts which are rich in content to encourage students in constructing their own knowledge actively and promoting their higher-order thinking, while they attempt to explore the content's multiple perspectives, which are enabled through the complex problem space.
According to McLarty et al. (1989) there are seven key design principles for guiding the development and implementation of an anchored instruction, which are: (1) choosing an appropriate anchor; (2) developing shared expertise around the anchor; (3) expanding the anchor; (4) using knowledge as tools for problem solving; (5) teaching with the anchor; (6) merging anchor with literacy experiences; (7) allowing student exploration. Action Research
Action research is a form of practitioner research broadly defined as a authentic assessment, and had been indicated there are several advantages, for instance, to better understanding and quality on the performance, and to improve rationality of people's practice in many workplace (Darling-Hammond & Snyder, 2000).
It's ultimate goal in education on John Dewey's notion, is to encourages critical investigation, self-reflection, through observation, semi-structured interviews and analyzing the activities in the classroom etc. (McNiff & Whitehead, 2006). Its five-phase cyclical process include diagnosing, action planning, action taking, evaluating and specifying learning, which has been well documented as improving teachers' practices on solving problems embedded in their teaching, and developing teachers' confidence, skills, and knowledge. The research process makes teachers more open to develop various teaching methods (Darling-Hammond & Snyder, 2000). It also provides explanations of how and why phenomena occur while some cases cannot be explained by adopting statistical methodologies. It helps teachers in building practical theories of their own teaching (Whitehead & McNiff, 2006).
3. Research Framework
Identifying the Primary Problems
After reflecting upon our teaching, we had find out students are always interesting in particular functions, such as using Bluetooth to control their NXT caterpillar cars by computers as remote control cars, or waving the stick installed on the robot to hit other students' robots or anything. Students have no idea to explore the possibility of what the NXT can achieve, even seems have not interest to build something the teachers required.
Besides, the students usually cannot find out the key concepts to solve problems about basic programming or mechanics when they come across. They even have no motivation to manage an attempt by teachers' suggestions, cluing, and used to leave the problems to teacher, then back to enjoy the functions they are always interesting in. Planning the Video-based Instructions
being inert, to encourage students discover ways in structuring learning experiences. A series of stories has been designed contain four main macrocontexts embedded in the idea of the script, about uniting the humanity and to terminate the long wars in the fictional Lego World.
Unit 1 "The Mecha Blueprints!" describes a long war between different human races, takes place in the continent of fictional continent. One day, a robot called NXT which is an ancient high-tech automatic mobile weapons with AI, was manufactured by a legendary civilization thousands years ago, suddenly appears in the continent and is going to rid the world of war. Students in this unit will act the NXT to navigate the internet, and to look for the mechanical design which they want to use, to fit the solution of several missions we have given to them.
Than unit 2 "The Resurrection of Ancient!" describes during the difficult war between the NXT and the humanity for long years, the NXT accidentally finds numbers of powerful mobile suits under ruins of temples. If the NXT can restore the programs of these lost machines, they will give it a great help. So in this unit students will look over the mistakes in the programs we give them. Teaching them to be able to look into the help document in the NXT-G software, to solve and repair the basic programs.
In unit 3 "The Reconstruction of Hometown!" the NXT finally defeats the evil rulers of the human races, and brings peace to the continent. Now the students have to help them in reconstructing the Lego World, by building various robotic construction vehicles to accomplish several constructing tasks, which are the children's favorite all the time. In this unit we focus on the mechanical composition of the robots, with the application of basic mechanics.
Finally unit 4 "The New Threat!" states several years after the end of the war between the NXT and humanity, it has opened a new era of peace until the new enemy as evil robots in the distant north has revived. The students have to build any kind of robot designed by themselves, or looking for on the internet to choice what they want to build, to challenge the robots designed by other classmates or teachers, as a competition game. As we know, it is also their favorite game after observing during the months.
4. Results and Discussions
The situated learning approach had improved students' motivation on both active exploration and problems solving skills. They also became immersed when we combine the themes which students contact in their daily life, such like Angry Bird, Seediq Bale or Transformers, the situated stories was very attractive to students. They can remember the story after several weeks.
Some robot such like Hammer Car or Transformers did very attractive to students. They enjoyed them and requested to extend the class of building their own controlled robots. Even though sometimes when students build their robots whether following with the demo or not, it spent times more then we expected. The activities of try to answer first challenge made students be more concentrate and much active. We adjust the difficulty several times to sure the questions cannot be too easy of difficult to every students.
5. Conclusions
In this research represents using a situated learning approach to improve students' Lego NXT robotic class, and seen the effect of encouraging students in both active exploring the kit's broad abilities and solving the problems while they build up the robot.
On the whole the Anchored Instruction had solving much teaching problems in the Lego NXT class. And there are also two aspect can be better in the future study:
In future research, "Flow Theory" can be apply in the observation, since "flow" is a psychological state and also a way of understanding motivation was originally defined by Csikszentmihalyi(1990), to better understand the equilibrium between the level of challenge and personal skill.
Sometimes students had diffcult in teamwork, this also can be considered in the future Lego NXT class design.
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