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The COVID-19 pandemic forces many robotics teachers to rethink their approach to education. Distance rules and the constant threat of a partial or complete lockdown leading to limited access to classroom equipment make it challenging to plan for hands-on education where students experience robotics by experimenting and studying with robotic hardware. On the other hand, this hands-on active learning experience is one of the strengths of robotics education and the ability to handle hardware equipment a substantial learning goal of study programs on robotics. In this paper we present and discuss the approach taken for the course Robotics and Embedded Systems at Maastricht University. The course had been adjusted to meet COVID-19 safety regulations and to allow for a fast seamless transition between onsite education at university and online education where students can work with robotic hardware at home. We share experience, best practice advice as well as educational material to help other teachers benefit from our developments. A key contribution is our custom-made, low-cost, educational modular robotic system for teaching kinematics, locomotion, and PID control that we make publicly available for replication through the website https://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/edmo.

The eCraft2Learn research project aims to introduce digital fabrication and maker movement in formal and informal education settings. In the context of the eCraft2Learn pilots we organised during the academic year 2017-18 two experimental sessions of six hours each in the eCraft2Learn lab for student-teachers who attend the post-graduate course STEM Education. This paper reports the educational methodology and the technologies used in the experimental sessions, the projects that trainees first observed being developed by the young students and then realised by themselves, and finally the evaluation of this intervention through trainees’ reports and the “homework” assigned to them.

The eCraft2Learn research project aims to introduce digital fabrication and maker movement in formal and informal education settings. In the context of the eCraft2Learn pilots we organised during the academic year 2017-18 two experimental sessions of six hours each in the eCraft2Learn lab for student-teachers who attend the post-graduate course STEM Education. This paper reports the educational methodology and the technologies used in the experimental sessions, the projects that trainees first observed being developed by the young students and then realised by themselves, and finally the evaluation of this intervention through trainees’ reports and the “homework” assigned to them.

The concept of “trial and error strategy” is pervasively used in the literature on robot programming: in particular, it is often claimed that some novices use a trial and error strategy, while others use a more rational and reasoned strategy. Here it is argued that the concept of “trial and error” is of little use for the analysis of the strategies adopted by novices and experts in programming robots. Indeed, in a certain sense, all problems and sub-problems faced by programmers are addressed in a trial and error and rational fashion. Moreover, that very concept does not play any meaningful role in revealing the richness of the criteria used by novices and experts to orient themselves in the vast space of the possible solutions to their problems. These claims will rely on an artificial-intelligence-inspired construal of the concepts of “problem” and “strategy” and will be substantiated by a preliminary analysis of the various sub-problems involved in robot programming.

Educational robotics laboratories typically involve building and programming robotic systems to perform particular tasks or to solve problems. Here we explore the potentialities of a class of robot-supported educational activities which are less discussed in the literature. In these activities, primary school children are asked to explain the behaviors of a robot which has been previously constructed by the laboratory supervisor, rather than to construct or program a robot. It will be argued that activities of this kind can play a significant role in science education: being engaged in a collaborative process of explanation of the behaviors of an educational robot, children have the opportunity to develop scientific research skills and competencies and to reflect on fundamental issues concerning the methodology of scientific research.