European Community, H2020-EU.5.a.
Topic: SEAC-1-2014 - Innovative ways to make science education and scientific careers attractive to young people 2015-2018

Identity:

Title: ER4STEM: Educational Robotics for STEM.

Funding: European Community, H2020-EU.5.a. - Make scientific and technological careers attractive to young students, and forster sustainable interaction between schools, research institutions, industry and civil society organisations, Topic: SEAC-1-2014 - Innovative ways to make science education and scientific careers attractive to young people 2015-2018.

Coordinator: Vienna University of Technology - TU Wien (Austria).

Consortium: Vienna University of Technology - TU Wien (Austria) European Software Institute Center Eastern Europe - ESI CEE (Bulgaria) Practical Robotics Institute Austria - PRIA (Austria) University of Athens Educational Technology Lab - UoA (Greece) AcrossLimits (Malta) Cardiff University School of Social Sciences - Cardiff University (United Kingdom) Certicon - CE (Czech Republic).

Aim:

The domain of robotics represents a multidisciplinary and highly innovative field encompassing physics, maths, informatics and even industrial design as well as social sciences. Moreover, due to various application domains, teamwork, creativity and entrepreneurial skills are required for the design, programming and innovative exploitation of robots and robotic services.

Children are fascinated by such autonomous machines. This fascination and the variety of fields and topics covered make robotics a powerful idea to engage with. Young girls as well as boys can easily connect robots to their personal interests and share their ideas through these tangible artefacts.

ER4STEM will refine, unify and enhance current European approaches to STEM education through robotics in one open operational and conceptual framework.

The concept is founded on three important pillars of constructionism:

1. engaging with powerful ideas,

2. building on personal interests, and

3. learning through making (or presenting ideas with tangible artefacts).

ETL's Activities:

ETL leads WP4 and contributes its expertise in the fields of:

•  WP1: ER4STEM framework, Review of literature and research for tools and technologies and identification of best practice on pedagogical design & innovations. Best Practice from Industry and Education

•  WP2:Educational Robotics Workshops: Provide generic feasible curriculum based on ER4STEM framework. Provide a basis for organisation of workshops. Organise workshops

•  WP4: Pedagogical design and innovation for Educational Robotics - Design of ER4STEM activity plan

•  WP6:Design an evaluation framework - Carry out of evaluation - Feedback the evaluationa results into further developments