Senior Spotlight: Independent Learning Experience

Independent Learning Experience: Two Week Summer Camp NXT Robotics Curriculum

By Cassandra Fach, TeenLife Guest Writer

Having been the over exuberant student in all of the science classes I took in middle school and high school, it was only natural that my Senior Independent Project would be related to science. However, I did not want to take the "normal” approach to science, that is, I did not want to do a project that was focused on finding an answer.

For four weeks, I worked at Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach on my project entitled, Robotics: Creativity through Critical Thinking under Professor Dr. Chris Rogers. Although there are numerous goals for this curriculum, the most important one is to teach students to take risks and find creative solutions. Through a process of designing and redesigning, students will not only learn how to write programs in LabView and build different robots with the NXT and Tetrix kits, but they will also learn to take risks. At the end of this course students will have the tools to design a unique final project.

Before I could even write the manuals, I had to first complete the activities. In a week and half I had built NXT robots that could do a silly walk, push candy, follow a black line with and without proportional controls, maintain a certain distance from my hand using a light sensor, navigate an obstacle course, talk to another NXT to simulate joystick car racing, and collect data to find a spring constant using an ultrasound sensor. In order to do this, I learned about while loops, case structures, blue tooth communication, parallel programming, master slave relationship, data logging, and creating graphs.

To most people, these topics seem foreign or boring. Some may even ask, so what? What is the big deal about building robots and learning how to write code in LabView? The answer is not simple and is often personal. For me, building robots allowed me to be creative. Even with my time limitations, I kept changing the base robot a little bit, trying to improve it. Each activity presented a new challenge, usually a challenge that I had no clue how to tackle at first. Yet, I tackled each one with the help of Help Modules, mistakes, and graduate students. Rather than relaying a teacher to provide me with the information needed to complete the activity, I relied on myself. I allowed myself to make hundreds of mistakes and use the resources available to me. You do not have to want to be an engineer to love robotics.

Being able to dedicate four weeks to my project allowed me to not only learn a lot of news things, but also to enjoy learning. I enjoyed self teaching and not focusing on a grade or an evaluation. I learned that perseverance is not being stubborn, just having a little faith in yourself. Even though writing one program took me three days, it worth it because I eventually found a solution; no one had to give the answer. I also learned that the strict schedule I kept to in high school was maybe not the best way to work.

My checklists and schedules that had every hour of every day planed out allowed me to accomplish a lot of things, but not always to enjoy what I was doing. During my senior project I set broad and flexible goals for myself each week. I allowed myself to take breaks and look at the work going on around me. By doing so, I quickly began to love what I doing. I did not mind going to CEEO for five to eight hours a day because it was fun to learn. In addition to learning about robotics, I also learned about asking questions. If you ask the question three to five different ways and still can’t figure it out, it is time to look at things a new way, not dismiss the problem at hand. Finally, Ultimate Frisbee Fridays should be mandatory everywhere. Most importantly, I learned that you cannot always do everything you want to do. I learned this quickly when I found myself at the end of the third week with the curriculum not finished. I had not been slacking by any means, my project was just time consuming. I realized that I needed to reevaluate my priorities and focus on what was important, finishing the curriculum.

My final product includes a teacher’s manual, student’s manual, and a website with companion resources including videos, pictures, and sample programs (https://sites.google.com/site/ilerobotics/).

My internship confirmed for me that engineering is the path I want to take in college. More importantly, it taught me to trust in my ability to find solutions and not be afraid to make mistakes and ask people for help. Success is built upon failures, a lesson I did not truly understand until I sat in front of computer all day for weeks writing programs that almost never worked on their first try.

-Cassandra Fach is a 2010 graduate of The Winsor School in Boston