The Virginia Tech First Robotics Program Partnership: Technological Literacy Through Self Efficacy

This paper describes a partnership between Virginia Tech (VT) and the Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) FIRST robotics high-school team which includes undergraduates from a two-semester mechanical engineering senior capstone design course. The FIRST robotics program at MCPS was developed nine years ago by one of the co-authors, Dr. Brand, to facilitate STEM literacy by creating experiences to promote self-efficacy of high-school students in STEM areas. Unlike most FIRST programs around the country, the MCPS program was set up in the context of a two-semester robotics course that high-school students take for credit. This FIRST program at MCPS was developed using approaches which are based on Bandura’s [1,2] four sources of efficacy: mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, social persuasion, and stress reduction. In this manner, high-school students achieve a level of familiarity and literacy in engineering and other STEM topics, such as design and manufacturing, in the context of robotics. VT engineering capstone design students working with the high-school students are taught mentoring and leadership skills in order to effectively interact and promote self-efficacy with the high-school students. Through their experiences of mentoring, the VT students also achieve an additional level of their own self-efficacy with technical subjects, and an understanding of how to facilitate STEM learning and literacy in others. This paper discusses the structure of the partnership which supports self-efficacy to foster technological literacy in both the high-school and undergraduate students. This approach is also preparing engineering undergraduates for success in professional practice as well as facilitating future successful outreach and mentoring strategies for these students to further technological literacy in future generations.