Development of an assessment for measuring middle school student attitudes towards robotics activities

The next generation of world citizens must be technologically fluent members of society. By technological fluency we mean the ability to manipulate technology creatively and for one's own use. This fluency is composed of knowledge and skills utilizing materials and tools, as well as attitudes, (e.g. confidence), with respect to technology. Numerous interventions exist to support middle school students' technological fluency, and robotics activities are popular. It is critical that instruments assessing student attitudes towards robotics are available for the development and evaluation of these interventions. We present an instrument for assessing middle school students' technological fluency attitudes specifically tailored for robotics activities. Survey subscales were developed from existing science motivation research, and individual measurement items were generated and adapted within those subscales. The robotics activity attitudes scale (RAAS) was revised through three rounds of pilot testing in 2010, 2012 and 2015. The final RAAS in 2015 consisted of 50 items with an overall Cronbach's alpha of .972 (N=236) organized in four dimensions of Curiosity, Interest, Expectancy Value, and Confidence and Identity.

[1]  Carol S. Dweck,et al.  Even Geniuses Work Hard. , 2010 .

[2]  Christian D. Schunn,et al.  Children's Motivation toward Science across Contexts, Manner of Interaction, and Topic. , 2014 .

[3]  Molly H. Weinburgh,et al.  The Modified Attitudes toward Science Inventory: Developing an Instrument to Be Used with Fifth Grade Urban Students. , 2000 .

[4]  Cynthia J. Atman,et al.  Engineering Student Attitudes Assessment , 1998 .

[5]  Emily Hamner,et al.  The Debugging Task: Evaluating a Robotics Design Workshop , 2010, AAAI Spring Symposium: Educational Robotics and Beyond.

[6]  Richard G. Netemeyer,et al.  Scaling Procedures: Issues and Applications , 2003 .

[7]  E. Hamner,et al.  Arts & Bots: Techniques for distributing a STEAM robotics program through K-12 classrooms , 2013, 2013 IEEE Integrated STEM Education Conference (ISEC).

[8]  Illah R. Nourbakhsh,et al.  Arts & Bots: Application and outcomes of a secondary school robotics program , 2015, 2015 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE).

[9]  Fabiane Barreto Vavassori Benitti,et al.  Exploring the educational potential of robotics in schools: A systematic review , 2012, Comput. Educ..

[10]  T. Kanda,et al.  Psychology in human-robot communication: an attempt through investigation of negative attitudes and anxiety toward robots , 2004, RO-MAN 2004. 13th IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (IEEE Catalog No.04TH8759).

[11]  M. Ranney,et al.  Developing the changes in attitude about the relevance of science (CARS) questionnaire and assessing two high school science classes , 2003 .

[12]  Kerrie A. Douglas,et al.  Validity: Meaning and Relevancy in Assessment for Engineering Education Research , 2015 .

[13]  Lisa S. Blackwell,et al.  Implicit theories of intelligence predict achievement across an adolescent transition: a longitudinal study and an intervention. , 2007, Child development.

[14]  Emma Mercier,et al.  Images of self and others as computer users: the role of gender and experience , 2006, J. Comput. Assist. Learn..

[15]  Kevin Crowley,et al.  Developing technological fluency through creative robotics , 2010 .

[16]  C. Bartneck,et al.  Measuring the anthropomorphism, animacy, likeability, perceived intelligence, and perceived safety of robots , 2008, HRI 2008.

[17]  Howard Kimmel,et al.  High school students' attitudes to and knowledge about engineering , 2003, 33rd Annual Frontiers in Education, 2003. FIE 2003..

[18]  Linda S. Hirsch,et al.  Middle school students ' attitudes to and knowledge about engineering , 2004 .