Inter-university project based on LEGO NXT

Abstract

The paper describes the mechanism for involving students from multilingual, geographically separated institutions in a coordinated educational experience and presents the observations and evaluation of outcomes related to the collaborative project. The project was realized as a part of ILERT (international learning environment for real-time software intensive control system) EU/US activity sponsored by FIPSE/EC Atlantis Program. As a part of the pilot implementation phase of the ILERT project, international students teams have worked on robotic design and control experiments with LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT kits. The project has engaged on-site students and faculty of universities from four countries (USA, Poland, France, and Czech Republic). The robot maze navigation problem has been defined as an example. LEGO-MINDSTROMS NXT kit has been selected as a common platform for students teams. A Web-based project management system (WebPMS) has been used to improve communication and test Internet based tools for inter-university collaboration. Final evaluation of the project outcomes, including students survey results, are presented in this paper.