The Effectiveness of Using mBot to Increase the Interest and Basic Knowledge in Programming and Robotic among Children of Age 13

The encouragement program of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) among students has been the focus of policymakers from different countries including Malaysia since the rapid development of the Internet of things (IoT). The objective of the STEM initiative is to promote interest among students in taking up the related STEM subjects especially the subjects of computer science and electronics engineering. The program also expected to produce students who have knowledge, skills and values in the STEM fields to increase the number of experts in preparing an adequate supply of qualified workers for employment. Many approaches have been applied to increase the interest of students in learning STEM and one of them is using robots. Robots have the edge of becoming the next big thing in traditional curricula. The enjoyment and excitement that bring into the learning experience by using robots are deemed as an instrumental aspect for teaching young children. This paper discussed the effectiveness of using low-cost Arduino based robots to increase the interest of students in learning about electronics and computer programming. A workshop on learning robotic programming was conducted in two selected secondary schools in Sarawak by Universiti Teknologi MARA Sarawak. A total of 93 participants of age 13 years old were taking part in the workshop. The participants were asked to fill in an entrance survey before the workshop and an exit survey after attending the workshop. By analysing both surveys, the increment of interest on STEM among the students is measured. A competition has been organized to test on the robotic programming knowledge and skills of the students. Five out of six groups of the students could use the sensor that they have not been taught before. Two groups can solve the very difficult questions that involve multiple sensors during the competition. This finding indicates that the workshop has successfully promoted the interest of learning robotic programming among the students because the students have self-learned to use the new sensors of the robot.