Building Self Efficacy In Robotics Education

While the cognitive and attitudinal aspects of robotics education have been actively discussed in literature, little attention has been paid to the analysis of student beliefs that underlie their learning behavior, self-evaluation, and orientation. This paper reports an educational experiment designed by the authors to promote and evaluate self-efficacy beliefs among members of the Trinity College Robotics Study Team (RST). This team of engineering undergraduates designs autonomous robots for the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition and Trinity College Fire-Fighting Robot Contest. In this experiment we focus the instruction on helping students to develop their sense of self-efficacy. RST students' self-efficacy beliefs are studied through precourse and post-course surveys, observations, interviews, and project assessment. In the paper we report the results of this experiment and, based on those results, propose recommendations for fostering self-efficacy in robotics education. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2007.