A Robotics-based Learning Environment Supporting Computational Thinking Skills — Design and Development

This Research to Practice Full Paper presents the development of a robotics-based learning environment using an educational design research approach. Contemporary teaching should prepare learners for everyday and working life, suggesting that this can only be achieved by implementing Digital Education from primary education onwards. Since computer science education is planned to be anchored in the Austrian primary school curriculum as an interdisciplinary competence development, research into teaching methods and content suitable for this area is becoming increasingly necessary. In this context, the transfer of innovations and didactic approaches into teaching is one of the biggest challenges. Introducing coding and robotics would be a possible strategy. Educational robotics provide access to real-world scenarios and offer age-appropriate possibilities to explore digital aspects of living and working environments. Combined with narrative methods, such as digital storytelling, problem-solving skills could be developed. Since the implementation of computer science in primary education requires practical and theoretical knowledge, an educational design approach is used that takes this aspect into account and allows close interaction between researchers and practitioners. This paper focuses on investigating a feasible and effective robotics-based learning environment for developing and supporting problem-solving skills at primary school using the learning and teaching method digital storytelling. Hence, the development of the learning environment and the didactic approach gained from qualitative results of interviews and observations from the first cycle of the research project are presented, providing plausible arguments for further implementing this robotics-based learning environment.