Alignment with 4-H Youth Development Outcomes

This curriculum is meant to serve as a resource for adult and youth leaders in robotics. The anticipated outcomes of using this resource are:

Adults will increase their comfort and confidence in leading STEM-based activities.

• Adults will gain familiarity with the experiential learning model.
• Youth will increase their involvement in 4-H STEM project opportunities.
• Youth will demonstrate creativity, innovation and critical thinking skills.
• Youth can justify their decisions about their programming strategy.
• Youth can use information gained through trial-and-error programming to refine decision making skills.
• Youth can develop their own robotic challenges and express creativity and critical thinking.
• Since there is not one right way to complete a challenge, youth can be creative in their robotic program.
• Youth will increase their ability to work collaboratively with others.
• Youth will work in pairs or teams to complete challenges.
• Youth will respect others opinions on how to solve problems.
• Youth will be able to improve communication skills.
• Youth will be able to reflect on successes and failures in programming and describe the issues.
• Youth will use technology to help express ideas.
• Youth will learn how to deal with stress and trial-and-error in programming.

Alignment with 4-H Science Abilities, 4-H Science Process Skills and STEM Content Expertise

The 4-H Science Abilities are divided into overarching process skills. These seven process skills are: observing, questioning, hypothesizing, predicting, investigating, interpreting, and communicating. Several of these skills are described in the previous section. In addition to life skill development outcomes, youth who use robotics as a platform for learning also gain abilities specific to STEM content. For instance, youth will observe how the robot performs, question why the robot performed as it did and troubleshoot the program using the information gathered. Specifically, participants will improve their basic computer operation skills (save and open files, cut and paste tools); gain experience with application of basic math functions (addition, subtraction, etc.); apply geometry to calculate turn radius and wheel rotation distance; and use units of measurement along with measurement estimation and comparison.