Universities are responding to these challenges using technology.

Online learning platforms now offer rubrics, modules, calendars, schedules, quizzes, syllabi, analytics even speed-grading. They create centralized learning hubs integrating with Teams, Zoom, Adobe and more. These enable greater communication, formative and summative assessments, and help with efficiency. However, they only partially address the changes and challenges in play - educators still need content and tools to stimulate creativity. Since technology platforms reduce personal contact, they need ways to gauge engagement and learning impacts beyond retention. Curiosity, inventiveness, originality, teamwork and even mental health are all important learning outcomes.

At the University of Sheffield, Dr Alex Lucas and colleagues have been innovating. Recognising that teaching computer science should be evolving, they used their university department to pilot the early approaches of student-centred blended learning.

Dr Lucas and colleagues teach large classes of 300 students or more located all over the world on courses that range from basic programming to advanced algorithms. How could they encourage creativity teaching syntax and semantics of a programming language? How could they motivate learners to really grasp the essentials of an algorithm, understand its limitations and practical uses? How could they measure and enhance progress?

Driving creativity and putting the student at the centre of learning.

To address these questions, they wanted a platform that could offer offline and online learning for students on campus or studying remotely. It also had to be fun and put the student at the centre of the learning journey by including activities such as solving challenges, playing games, programming actions to solve real problems, creating behaviours so that users interact and respond with the robot. They therefore decided to use the MiRo-E robot and MiRoCLOUD platform to teach creative coding.

By coding the biomimetic MiRo-E robot, students discovered that there is no unique right way. Instead, they had to be curious and creative in programming and algorithm design to meet the challenges. Coding MiRo brought the robot to life - seeing the results as behaviours motivated the students to try something new, adapt, develop, redesign and explore. They felt ownership of their creation and were ready to demonstrate it.

Coding takes time, and even on-site students may not always have enough lab access time to create solutions. By using MiRoCLOUD they could design, code and test from anywhere in the world with a browser and an internet connection. Later, when in the lab, they could download and test their code onto MiRo to witness and engage with the robot itself. For students working remotely, on-site technicians operated MiRo for them to observe over a video call, downloading from as far away as Hong Kong and China.

For Dr Lucas and his colleagues, MiRoCLOUD was an integral tool that enabled large numbers of students, some remote, to follow this creative, challenge-based learning approach and have the satisfaction of seeing working code on a real robot. This also helped to unburden academic staff - on-site groups were smaller and events like assessments and demonstrations could continue in-person. This gave the benefits of social contact and two-way dialog while helping to improve student presentation skills.

Another example includes the weekend Hackathons organised by students from the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics at Heriot-Watt and Edinburgh Universities. Taking over a hall for a weekend with a regular supply of pizza, refreshments and even anterooms for sleep, participants engaged in fun, self-created challenges. Games included ‘Simon Says’, ‘MiRo football’, ‘Follow My Leader’ and “Miro Maze’. A judging and demonstration session at the end provided an element of competition and informal motivation to an essentially social event. People connected and had fun, helping to develop both their networks and their knowledge.

As experience with using MiRo for teaching and learning grows, new methods of adapting challenges to an individual student’s learning journey will emerge. MiRo has already been used in cross curricular activities, teaching Maths, Biology, Psychology and Art. As demonstrated in computer science, by helping to put students at the centre of their creative learning journey, universities can offer great value for money.

POST AUTHOR

David Lane CBE FREng FRSE

Executive Chair, Consequential Robotics

Professor Emeritus,

Co-Founder Edinburgh Centre for Robotics, National ROBOTARIUM, Heriot-Watt University, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

Watch the video interview

In Conversation: Blended Learning in Universities with MiRoCLOUD