Using the AIBOs in a CS1 course

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Using the AIBOs in a CS1 course

• John Chilton and Maria Gini
• Dept of CSE, University of Minnesota

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Outline

• Our CS1 course
• Why use the AIBO in a CS1 course?
• Educational objectives
• Details on software and assignment
• Evaluation

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Our CS1 course

• The course is taken mostly by freshmen
• The course is based on Scheme
• 120-130 students a semester.
• 3 hours lecture and a 2 hours lab done in smaller
  groups
• The course is part of a 3-years project to
  improve learning in large classes by using active
  learning and group activities

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Why use the AIBO in a CS1 course?

• Making the material fun and interesting to
  encourage students to major in CS
• Students think that Scheme is abstract, esoteric,
  and has limited value. By showing they can use
  it to control the AIBO they see it can be used
  for a broad set of applications

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Educational Objectives Collaboration and
Competition

• Engage the students, make them active learners,
  build a sense of belonging to a group
• Cooperation is more than working together, it
  requires a common goal and motivation
• Competition between groups creates the common
  goal winning
• Everyone received full credit for participation.
  Group rewarded with extra credit for winning
  teams and pride.

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Details on assignment

• Two hours lab, 7-8 students per team
• Each team had to make the AIBO to dance and
  demonstrate the dance. Peers voted on a winner
• Use an agenda data structure (a table with times
  and events stored in queues) to add delays
  between actions and to sequence the actions.
  Actions can add other actions to the agenda.
• Students could
• Control the LEDs on the dog face
• Motions -- walk, rotate, sit, stand, pounce and
  control individual joints
• Produce sounds and play music

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Software

• Server side implementation for remote wireless
  communication with AIBO, called A MOdular Remote
  AIBO Interface (AMORAI)
• The AMORAI server framework is implemented as a
  collection of Tekkotsu behaviors, each which
  listens or write to a port.
• The client side AMORAI application is implemented
  in Guile. It uses the AIBO IP address to connect
  with the socket that listens to the AIBO.

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Play Movie
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Student Engagement

• Students found the lab fun and engaging
• Noise level was up
• Spontaneous group activities, drawing at the
  white board, discussing with team mates

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Software available at http//www.cs.umn.edu/c
hilton/amorai For more information email
chilton_at_cs.umn.edu gini_at_cs.umn.edu
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Educational objectives
We want to address some of the issues that affect
recruiting and retention in CS programs, by

• Increase confidence by hands-on programming
• Solve real world problems
• Work in groups
• Combine collaboration with competition

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Evaluation

• A questionnaire was given to the students
  directly after the activity. In response to the
  question, Do you have any thoughts you would be
  willing to share about the lab? Was it fun?'', a
  great majority (83 out of 97) indicated they
  enjoyed the lab, 12 did not answer the question
  and only two students wrote that they disliked
  the lab.
• In an anonymous course evaluation in response to
  a similar question, 52 out of 56 students
  indicated they enjoyed the lab, two students did
  not respond, and again only two students disliked
  the lab.

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