TY - GEN
T1 - Developing Computational Thinking in STEM Education with Drones
AU - Sattar, Farha
AU - Nawaz, Muhammad
N1 - Funding Information:
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This research project was funded by the Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS), Charles Darwin University, Australia and had approvals from the Department of Defence, Australian Government, Department of Education, Northern Territory, Australia. The project had ethics clearance from the Ethics Committee of Charles Darwin University, Australia.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 IEEE.
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - Recent trends in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education are focused on developing problem-solving skills and computational thinking and empowering students with the STEM discipline's knowledge to solve real-world problems. STEM incorporates an interdisciplinary approach that includes inquiry, analysis, critical thinking, practical experimentation, and cooperative problem-solving. Technological advancements are offering new ways to integrate new tools such as drones, robotics and gaming in teaching and learning practices and modify the pedagogical approaches that are more appealing and engaging. This paper presents an innovative pedagogical approach and practice that integrate drone technology and block-based programming to foster students' computation thinking in a STEM context. The block-based visual programming languages provide an interactive environment to connect the blocks and write programs. The study was conducted in six Australian schools. Students were assigned projects to automate drones using the DroneBlocks app and make programs to fly the drone in different geometrical patterns; straight line, arch, rectangle, triangles and zig-zag and integrate the various manoeuvres; bounce, 8D flips, and throw & go along flight paths. Students' computational thinking development was examined with an emphasis on their performance in formulating and problem-solving. Results have shown that integrated drone and programming pedagogy contributed significantly to students' learning of developing computational thinking for problem-solving and decomposing a problem into smaller parts in a sequence that includes mathematical algorithms to write programs.
AB - Recent trends in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education are focused on developing problem-solving skills and computational thinking and empowering students with the STEM discipline's knowledge to solve real-world problems. STEM incorporates an interdisciplinary approach that includes inquiry, analysis, critical thinking, practical experimentation, and cooperative problem-solving. Technological advancements are offering new ways to integrate new tools such as drones, robotics and gaming in teaching and learning practices and modify the pedagogical approaches that are more appealing and engaging. This paper presents an innovative pedagogical approach and practice that integrate drone technology and block-based programming to foster students' computation thinking in a STEM context. The block-based visual programming languages provide an interactive environment to connect the blocks and write programs. The study was conducted in six Australian schools. Students were assigned projects to automate drones using the DroneBlocks app and make programs to fly the drone in different geometrical patterns; straight line, arch, rectangle, triangles and zig-zag and integrate the various manoeuvres; bounce, 8D flips, and throw & go along flight paths. Students' computational thinking development was examined with an emphasis on their performance in formulating and problem-solving. Results have shown that integrated drone and programming pedagogy contributed significantly to students' learning of developing computational thinking for problem-solving and decomposing a problem into smaller parts in a sequence that includes mathematical algorithms to write programs.
KW - Block-based Programming
KW - Coding
KW - Computational Thinking
KW - Drone Technology
KW - Tello Edu Drones
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85162676299&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/EDUCON54358.2023.10125117
DO - 10.1109/EDUCON54358.2023.10125117
M3 - Conference Paper published in Proceedings
AN - SCOPUS:85162676299
T3 - IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference, EDUCON
SP - 1
EP - 5
BT - EDUCON 2023 - IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference, Proceedings
PB - IEEE Computer Society
T2 - 14th IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference, EDUCON 2023
Y2 - 1 May 2023 through 4 May 2023
ER -