Arduino Baby Project: Robotics as a Tool to Support Permanence and Success of Technical Course Students in Informatics

Abstract

This Research Fully presents an approach to reducing the school dropout rate in Computer Technician courses, using robotics as a pedagogical tool. In a school context, the field of computer programming is considered the most important, because it contains concepts that form the basis of computing. However, few people can easily learn programming. Studies show that difficulties in assimilating programming concepts cause discouragement, and consequently lead to school dropout. In the face of this scenario, Educational Robotics has proved to be an important tool in expanding the STEM approach, in addition to presenting itself as a tool to motivate programming learning. With the goal of motivating students to stay in school, and to get a good start in learning programming, an approach called Arduino Baby was developed and employed, which uses Educational Robotics through the Arduino platform. It was structured and carried out in 4 main stages. During the execution, an integrating project was applied, the methodology of which included the creation of student teams, the distribution of bibliographic materials and kits, practice performance, and the exhibition of the developed works. At the end of the research, questionnaires were given, and semi-structured interviews were conducted for participating students, in order to find out the degree of motivation obtained. Results showed to be promising, and that they can be allies in the fight against school dropout.