Asee peer logo

Connecting Cognitive Domains of Bloom’s Taxonomy and Robotics to Promote Learning in K-12 Environment

Download Paper |

Conference

2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Atlanta, Georgia

Publication Date

June 23, 2013

Start Date

June 23, 2013

End Date

June 26, 2013

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

Curriculum Development

Tagged Division

K-12 & Pre-College Engineering

Page Count

33

Page Numbers

23.329.1 - 23.329.33

DOI

10.18260/1-2--19343

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/19343

Download Count

2430

Request a correction

Paper Authors

biography

James Muldoon Polytechnic Institute of NYU

visit author page

James Muldoon received B.S. degrees in Computer Engineering and Computer Science from the University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, in 2012. Upon graduation, he started research for a M.S. degree in Computer Engineering in the Wireless Telecommunications Lab under the supervision of Dr. Sundeep Rangan at Polytechnic Institute of NYU. He is currently serving as a teaching fellow at the Fort Greene Prep Middle School under NYU-Poly's GK-12 program funded by the NSF and CBRI. His research currently involves the NS-3 project and real-time software simulations in the mm-wave domain.

visit author page

biography

Paul T Phamduy Polytechnic Institute of New York University

visit author page

Paul Phamduy received a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering, from the University of Massachusetts Lowell (UML) in 2010. Upon graduation, he started research in the Nanometrology and Sensors Laboratory at UML. Paul completed his M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2012 focusing in the composite materials. He is currently serving as a teaching Fellow at the Pathways in Technology Early College HS under NYU-Poly’s GK-12 program funded by the NSF and CBRI. He is pursuing a Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering at Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly). His research interests are in mobile underwater robotics.

visit author page

biography

Raymond Le Grand Polytechnic Institute of New York University

visit author page

Raymond Le Grand received his B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, in 2011. Upon graduation, he worked briefly in the iPhone/iPad app industry before beginning his studies at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University. He is currently pursuing a M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering and is a fellow in NYU-Poly's GK-12 program funded by the NSF and CBRI. As part of this program, he is a teaching fellow at The Science & Medicine Middle School and the Edward Hart Elementary School in Brooklyn. He currently does research at the Dynamical Systems Laboratory of NYU-Poly in the area of robotic fish controlled by iPhone/iPad devices.

visit author page

biography

Vikram Kapila Polytechnic Institute of New York University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-5994-256X

visit author page

Vikram Kapila is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at NYU-Poly, where he directs an NSF funded Web-Enabled Mechatronics and Process Control Remote Laboratory, an NSF funded Research Experience for Teachers Site in Mechatronics, and an NSF funded GK-12 Fellows project. He has held visiting positions with the Air Force Research Laboratories in Dayton, OH. His research interests are in K-12 STEM education, mechatronics, robotics, and linear/nonlinear control for diverse engineering applications. Under Research Experience for Teachers Site and GK-12 Fellows programs, funded by NSF, and the Central Brooklyn STEM Initiative (CBSI), funded by six philanthropic foundations, he has conducted significant K-12 education, training, mentoring, and outreach activities to integrate engineering concepts in science classrooms and labs of dozens of New York City public schools. He received NYU-Poly’s 2002, 2008, and 2011 Jacobs Excellence in Education Award, 2002 Jacobs Innovation Grant, 2003 Distinguished Teacher Award, and 2012 Inaugural Distinguished Award for Excellence in the category Inspiration through Leadership. In 2004, he was selected for a three-year term as a Senior Faculty Fellow of NYU-Poly’s Othmer Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies. His scholarly activities have included 3 edited books, 6 chapters in edited books, 1 book review, 51 journal articles, and 100 conference papers. He has mentored 4 doctoral students, 11 masters students, 25 undergraduate research students, and 11 undergraduate senior design project teams; over 300 K-12 teachers and 95 high school student researchers; and 18 undergraduate GK-12 Fellows and 53 graduate GK-12 Fellows. Moreover, he directs K-12 education, training, mentoring, and outreach programs that currently enrich the STEM education of over 2,000 students annually.

visit author page

biography

Magued G. Iskander P.E. Polytechnic Institute of New York University

visit author page

Magued Iskander is a Professor of Civil and Urban Engineering at NYU-Poly. Dr. Iskander is a recipient of NSF CAREER award, Chi Epsilon (Civil Engineering Honor Society) Metropolitan District James M. Robbins Excellence in Teaching Award, Polytechnic’s Distinguished Teacher Award, and NYU-Poly’s Jacobs Excellence in Education Award (twice). Dr. Iskander’s research interests include Geotechnical modeling with transparent soils, foundation engineering, and urban geotechnology. He makes extensive use of sensors and measurement systems in his research studies. Dr. Iskander has published 10 books, 100 papers, and graduated 6 doctoral students, 27 masters students, 12 undergraduate research assistants, and supervised the research activities of 3 school teachers and 9 high school students.

visit author page

Download Paper |

Abstract

Connecting Cognitive Domains of Bloom’s Taxonomy and Robotics to Promote Learning in K-12 EnvironmentLearning as currently represented in our K-12 educational system doesn’t lend itself to effectiveclassroom environments that stimulate the growth of students’ cognitive domain. Instead, manycurrent classroom practices rely on rigid theory, disconnected facts, and computational recipes.Such an approach fails to relate to students’ everyday experiences in life outside the classroom.Consequently, when classroom instruction fails to connect theory/facts/procedures with students’conceptualization of ideas, it results in a loss of significance, i.e., the students can neither recallnor appreciate the significance of their classroom learning. Alternatively, the ability to recalltheory/facts/procedures and their significance allow students to apply ideas more effectively anddevelop higher-order thinking to synthesize new concepts. In Bloom’s taxonomy, learning incognitive domain is categorized from simple to complex behaviors. Specifically, knowledge,comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation are the behaviors that aretypically mastered sequentially due to the nature of their increasing difficulty. Bloom’s methodallows accurate measurement of students’ learning progression through each level of behavior.As behavior at each level is learned sequentially, with each new step in the chain building on itspredecessor, this approach allows the development of a deeper level of understanding andhigher-order thinking. Designing and conducting classroom activities that support the cognitivelearning domains of Bloom’s taxonomy can allow students to develop their fundamental andhigher-order skill sets. Unfortunately, the current educational system exposes students to onlysome but not all of the core cognitive learning categories of Bloom’s taxonomy.In this paper, three concrete illustrations will demonstrate integration of the entire cognitivelearning domain with robotics lessons. The example lessons will address typical educationalobjectives of K-12 science and math disciplines and strengthen students’ ability to learn thesubject material. Three lessons, based on Lego NXT robotics, will be used to transcend agegroups from elementary school to high school levels. For example, one lesson will use a mobilerobot with an ultrasonic sensor to navigate around obstacles. First, to allow students to developknowledge and ability to recall, verbal and visual connections will be drawn between the robot’sultrasonic sensor and a bat’s echolocation. Second, to develop their comprehension, the studentswill perform experiments to establish how the ultrasonic sensor interacts with various objects inthe environment and its effect on measurements. Third, to develop their cognitive domain ofapplication, the students will construct a robot that is capable of movement and uses theultrasonic sensor to interact with its environment. Having addressed the fundamental cognitivelearning domains, the robotics lesson will be used to address students’ higher-order cognitiveskills. First, to allow the development of analysis skills, students will conduct an experimentinvolving the measurement of reaction time and robot behavior when the ultrasonic sensor is setto several different distance thresholds. Second, to develop their synthesis skills, student willemploy the data collected from the previous step and make inferences about rebuilding theirrobot to optimize its abilities to maneuver around obstacles. Finally, to develop their evaluationskills, students will obtain qualitative data on their newly synthesized robot design to determinethe results of their decisions. Such an approach will guide students through the entire cycle ofcognitive domains of Bloom’s taxonomy to ensure that all levels of learning are captured. Thefull version of the paper will include classroom assessment of the aforementioned activities, inelementary, middle, and high school grades, and recommendations for future work.

Muldoon, J., & Phamduy, P. T., & Le Grand, R., & Kapila, V., & Iskander, M. G. (2013, June), Connecting Cognitive Domains of Bloom’s Taxonomy and Robotics to Promote Learning in K-12 Environment Paper presented at 2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Atlanta, Georgia. 10.18260/1-2--19343

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2013 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015