Increasing Elementary School Students’ Motivation for Computer Science through the RobotDay Project Activities

The RobotDay pilot project emerged as a series of promotional activities in elementary schools during the EU Coding Week in October 2023. The activities focused on programming several types of robots: Lego Spike, MODI car, Hexapod, mBot, micro:Maqueen Plus with an artificial intelligence camera, and micro:bit. The research aimed to determine whether promotional activities increase the interest of upper-grade elementary students in STEM fields, primarily in computer science, computing, and robotics. A survey conducted at the end of the activities confirmed the hypothesis. 70.4% of the students agreed or strongly agreed that they were very interested in continuing their education in STEM fields. It is necessary to organize promotional activities for STEM fields more frequently in elementary schools.