Robot Diaries >> Fall 2006

Single-Day Workshops

We distilled the summer activities for two one-day workshops in collaboration with C-MITES in early fall. By advertising through C-MITES, we obtained significantly higher attendance numbers than over the summer – 15 girls attended the first workshop and 12 attended the second. The workshops were attended by the C-MITES coordinators and were very well received.

The first external application of the curriculum developed through our summer and fall workshops is now available. This curriculum is an adaptation of the fall 2006 single-day workshops and was piloted in collaboration with C-MITES in spring 2007.

Fall Workshop Series

Our most extensive workshop was held from late September 2006 to mid January 2007 with a group of 8 girls from Falk school. We began the workshop in much the same way as our summer workshops, gradually introducing the girls to important robotic technologies over the first four sessions. A major difference was the early introduction of the Qwerk, a controller which allows the girls to create programs which actuate motors, servos, and LEDs. In addition, we began to introduce the girls to chat software designed by our group that was later used to control the robots. The early introduction of the software was essential to easing the girls into eventually creating programs for their robots.

Once girls had the foundational robotics knowledge to make cogent design decisions, we began a series of participatory design exercises which yielded a final robot design in session six. This design was selected by the girls from a set of five after a group discussion. The girls then each constructed a variant on the design, with the same underlying morphology, but widely varying cosmetic touches. Once the final robots were constructed, the girls took their robots home each week to experiment with programming the robots in a novel software framework which was refined weekly based on the girls’ feedback. At the conclusion of the workshop, we had successfully created a programming interface that was usable for the girls, proved the robustness of the final robot kit and its installation in the homes of eight middle school girls, and gathered extensive data on the effects of the workshop on the girls along several metrics.

Research Goals and Methodology.

Our fall workshop was an opportunity to run the longer workshop curriculum with a larger group of girls. In order to evaluate whether our activities were having a positive impact on the girls, we put together a research plan that focused on four primary questions:

• What did the girls learn as a result of participating in the workshop?
• Did the workshop encourage the girls to think more creatively about technology?
• Did the workshop help increase girls’ engagement with technology explorations?
• Were there any changes in girls’ identity with respect to technology?

Our research methods included interviewing the girls and their parents both before and after the workshop, and collecting information from the girls about their favorite and least favorite activities after each workshop session. We also provided the girls with cameras so they could record how they used their customized robots. Data analysis is currently ongoing.

Anecdotally, we have gotten the sense from our participants (and their families) that this workshop was different than what they had experienced before. Specifically, our early conversations with parents suggested that an opportunity for their daughters to engage in robotics in an all-girl environment would be welcome. As some parents told us about their daughter’ prior experiences with robotics classes,

“She has been fascinated by robotics for a long time... every time we sign up for one of those camps… we’ll get there on the first day and it’s all obnoxious little boys and she just goes, ‘never mind.’”

“The problems with some of those was that there were often more boys there than girls, and so she didn’t feel quite as comfortable. So that’s why this looked more interesting.”

We believe that the simple act of providing a space for girls’ technology exploration can be beneficial for girls in this age group. At least one participant confirmed this belief during her post-interview. When asked what someone could learn from participating in the workshop, she replied, “[they could learn] that robotics isn’t all for boys.”