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Building ArtBots to Attract Students into STEM LearningA Case Study of an International Robot Week for Secondary School Children

Francis wyffels · Willem Van de Steene · Jelle Roets · Maria-CristinaCiocci · Juan Pablo Carbajal

the date of receipt and acceptance should be inserted later

Abstract There is an increasing worldwide demandfor people educated into science and technology. Un-fortunately, girls and underprivileged students are of-ten underrepresented in Science, Technology, Engineer-ing and Mathematics (STEM) education programs. Webelieve that by inclusion of art in these programs, ed-ucational activities might become more attractive to abroader audience. In this work we present an example ofsuch an educational activity: an international roboticsand art week for secondary school students. This ed-ucational activity builds up on the project-based andinquiry learning framework. This article is intended asa brief manual to help others organise such an activ-ity. It also gives insights in how we led a highly het-erogeneous group of students into learning STEM andbecoming science and technology ambassadors for theirpeers.

1 Introduction

The rise of the Makers Movement is one of the mostexciting trends in the past decade [Martin, 2015]. In

Francis wyffelsGhent University, Dept. of Electronics and Information Sys-tems, and DwengoE-mail: Francis.wyffels@UGent.be

Willem Van de SteeneGhent University, Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering

Jelle RoetsAutodesk and Dwengo

Maria-Cristina CiocciGhent University, Dept. of Information Technology, and In-gegno

Juan Pablo CarbajalDwengo Helvetica

a learning environment, a maker is a true learner thatvalues the process of making as much as the product.Making has the potential to create life-long learners andit is an activity that fits perfectly within Project BasedLearning (PBL) curricula [Bender, 2012].

In this context, hands-on robotics appears as anideal instructional approach [Rieber, 1996, Catlin, 2012].The impact of a hands-on robotics program focused onexpression and creativity in the service of improvingstudent technological fluency has been recently high-lighted [Hamner and Cross, 2013]. Firstly, such a pro-gram offers (classroom) activities that expose studentsto valuable concepts from Science, Technology, Engi-neering and Mathematics (STEM), and it allows toaddress STEM topics deemed strategic in several na-tional education programs. Secondly, these activitiesare aligned with core constructionism concepts (e.g.“think with your hands”) and with current neuroscienceresearch on teaching to the brain’s natural learning sys-tem [Given, 2002]. Finally, activities involving roboticsalso foster essential skills like problem solving, collabo-ration and project management. The last two skills arespecially relevant when participants work in groups, asdone in scientific and engineering work.

The natural curiosity in kids and teenagers is par-ticularly strong when it comes to machines. This makerobots ideal tools to keep them engaged and motivatedduring learning. This is specially true when the learn-ing methodology uses unconstrained robotics, i.e. build-ing robots without preassembled kits. Unconstrainedrobotics truly puts the participant in the role of themaker, bringing them to decision-making situations thataccurately simulate working environments. For exam-ple, a group must first agree on a robot design; thisimplies the exchange of explanations to illustrate eachmember’s ideas and decide on the contributions that

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will be part of the final design. Once a design is in place,the group needs to effectively distribute tasks among itsmembers and make time scheme.

Robotics activities are well scaffolded with inquiryproject-based learning, which sets up an environmentwhere participants are engaged in open-ended, student-centered, hands-on activities [Colburn, 2000]. This in-volves tackling real-world problems and generating so-lutions, which can also be relevant for the participants’community [Bouillion and Gomez, 2001]. In this envi-ronment, the learning process is shared with the tutorswho guide and stimulate participants to question [Freireand Faundez, 1989].

Despite the fact that building a robot is an exit-ing idea (probably due to its strong presence in pop-ular culture), it might not resonate with the interestof all students. Noteworthy, there are gender issues tobe addressed in robotics or more generically in STEM.Worldwide girls are underrepresented in STEM orientedhigher education programs and professions [Burke andMattis, 2007]. Among other things, this segregation istroublesome for industries: when women are not in-volved in the design of their products, needs and de-sires unique to women may be overlooked [Hill et al.,2010]1. The gender difference is dramatic in well devel-oped countries [Sjøberg and Schreiner, 2010] and thereseems to be a relation with how technology is perceivedby girls, which discourages them to pursue activities inthe topic. Evidence shows that robots equally attractgirls and boys, but each gender might be captivatedby different aspects of the technology. A solution is todesign robotic activities that are attractive to both gen-ders [Johnson, 2003] and this might be catalysed by theinclusion of art.

In this paper we discuss a four days long roboticsand art activity (ArtBots) organized for a highly hetero-geneous group of teenagers. During ArtBots, studentswere asked to design and build their own robot artist.The activity involved the interaction between partici-pants of different ages, socio-economical backgroundsand cultures. The physical results of the process, theArtBots, were exposed on the last day during an ex-hibition at a Belgian contemporary art museum. Thegoals of the activity were threefold:

1. To provide technical skills and robot building expe-rience to high-school students,

2. To cause a cross-cultural exchange of knowledge andexperiences,

3. To train technology ambassadors who stimulate friendsand other students to get involved in technology.

1 The case of LEGO is analysed in https://youtu.be/CrmRxGLn0Bk

Fig. 1 Timeline of the organization and execution of ArtBots.The event lasted 4 days while its preparation required the or-chestrated actions of volunteers during 7 months: 98% of thetime was spent in the preparation of the event.

In this article, see Section 2, we document the ac-tivity so that it could be reproduced by others. Addi-tionally, we discuss ArtBots as an inquiry project-basedlearning approach for STEM and we share our insightson how the project affected the way participants per-ceive STEM (see Section 3).

2 An international robot week for secondaryschool students

While the ArtBots event itself spanned only 4 days(from Thursday evening until Monday afternoon), prepa-ration took much longer. It involved a crowdfundingcampaign, searching a workspace and sleeping accom-modation, acquiring material and tools, informing theparticipants, their schools and their families, and muchmore. An overview of the time distribution can be foundin Figure 1.

In the following sections we focus on the selection ofthe participants and the execution of the ArtBots eventitself.

2.1 Selecting the participants

ArtBots was intended for teenagers (from 12 to 18 yearsold) with a socio-economically disadvantaged backgroundand a strong interest in science and technology. Addi-tionally, we aimed for gender equality. In order to reachout to this audience, we defined a set of guidelines forthe selection of students that were sent to schools andother organisations that we contacted:

– Age: students were selected in the age range of 12to 18 year (high school).

– Gender: we aimed for a healthy collaboration be-tween girls and boys. We suggested schools and or-ganisations to assemble gender-balanced groups and

Building ArtBots to Attract Students into STEM Learning 3

Fig. 2 Summary of participants’ count (51 in total), genderand nationality. Credits: Maps from Wikimedia

to give preference to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans-gender (LGBT) students.

– Motivation: we asked for students who were fasci-nated by science and technology, eager to design andbuild machines or to program applications.

– Social background: different social backgrounds weredescribed. The preference was given to students withno opportunities to travel nor access to other leisureactivities (children’s camps) during their holidays.Students from economically disadvantaged house-holds should be treated with preference.

– Language: participants had to have basic Englishunderstanding (level A1 of the Common EuropeanFramework of Reference for Languages [CouncilOfEu-rope, 2000]).

The above criteria served as guidelines only. Fig-ure 2 summarizes the characteristics of the participants.Most of them had little experience with both art androbots. We did not survey the actual participants fortheir social backgrounds. Consequently, we can not giveany quantitative results on this matter. However, weobserved that we had a good mixture (approx. 50%) ofunderprivileged and privileged teenagers.

Fig. 3 Some of the participants’ robot designs after the brain-storming session with the artists.

2.2 Art and robots

The venue took place at a private art site with a largemodern and contemporary art exhibition space. The in-spiring and primitive environment immediately put ourparticipants in an artistic mindset. In order to give theparticipants a better understanding about art, we col-laborated with an artist co-creation platform who senttwo artists to present their views on art. The artists or-ganised a brainstorm session where participants had toexpress their views and ideas about artistic robots. Thekey idea was to give each participant the time to thinkabout their own ArtBot without being constrained bytools, materials or knowledge. During this brainstormprocess, all participants expressed their ideas on paper.This is illustrated in Figure 3.

2.3 Crash course into programming, electronics andmechanics

Robotics emerges from the combination of electronics,mechanics and programming. To build a robot, the de-

4 Francis wyffels et al.

signer must get in touch with all these fields. DuringArtBots we provided crash courses to all the partici-pants. Each crash course was designed and taught byvolunteers with experience in the field.

2.3.1 Programming and algorithmic thinking

It is unrealistic to think that we could teach program-ming in a few hours. However, the materials used forthis event, namely the Dwenguino board2, allowed us tofocus on a reduced set of programming and algorithmicskills: conditionals, loops and functions. This reducedskill set was sufficient to program robots with complexbehaviors.

To introduce the participants to conditionals andloops we used the Blockly Game suit3. After a shortand playful introduction to the topic and a short ice-breaker Q&A session, we invited the participants to setthe interface to the language they felt most comfortablewith and then we asked them to solve the “Maze” chal-lenges of Google Blockly. In these challenges the usermust write instructions for a software agent, such thatit moves through a maze from an initial point to a finaldestination marked with an arrow. Participants withprogramming experience were invited to opt for harderproblems from Google Blockly. The most experiencedparticipants settled into the programming games “Tur-tle” and “Pond”. We let them play with the game forabout 45 minutes.

The second part of the crash course focused on theuse of the Dwenguino board and took approximately30 minutes. In this part we also introduced the ideaof using functions. We used the integrated LCD screento show how functions are used. We allowed free explo-ration of the LCD and the other functions of the Dwen-guino. At the same time, small challenges were providedto guide students that might felt lost. For example, weasked them to write code to turn on the backlight ofthe LCD, to blink a LED, to detect a pressed button,etc. A small sample source code of an easy challengewould look like the one shown in Snippet 1.

Listing 1 Code used for the LCD programming challenge.

# include <LiquidCrystal .h># include <Wire.h># include <Dwenguino .h>

void setup () {initDwenguino ();

2 The Dwenguino board is a multi-functional Arduino IDEcompatible microcontroller platform (http://www.dwengo.org/tutorials/dwenguino/dwenguino-board).

3 https://blockly-games.appspot.com

// Use this function to print your namedwenguinoLCD .print("Hello!");// Can you read it?// How do you turn on the backlight ?

}

void loop () {}

Finally, we offered the participants a rather com-plex source code sample that printed the letter "A" onthe LCD and blinked a LED every time a button waspressed. We asked them to discover what part of thecode was responsible for the blinking LED and we chal-lenged them to modify the code such that the letter"A" moved one place to the left each time the buttonwas pressed. This find and hack task was optional andmeant to encourage deeper understanding of the code.

2.3.2 Electronics

Similar to the programming course, the electronics crashcourse was given in a hands-on way. The goal of thiscourse was to provide the basic concepts of electronicswith respect to robotics rather than overwhelming theparticipants with theory.

Initially, participants had to figure out what is theuse of electronics. For example, if they wanted to make apainting robot, we ask them to think about how wouldthey tackle the challenge by themselves. This guidedthem to analyse the painting behavior. Afterwards, theyhad to translate this into a robot and its components. Inorder words, they had to think about electronic compo-nents as equivalents of human senses, brain and mus-cles. The participants were able to come up with ex-amples such as sound sensors, light sensors, push but-tons and ultrasonic sensors. When discussing about therobot’s intelligence, participants proposed the analogybetween the brain and a programmable computer (ormicrocontroller). Servomotors and other type of motorswould play the role of muscles.

After this initiation, the main part of the crashcourse took place which consisted of solving differentchallenges in small groups of two or three participants.For example, one of these challenges consisted in con-trolling the position of a servo with a potentiometer.This is a relatively simple task that covers all the nec-essary concepts: analog input processed by a microcon-troller which controls actuators. We provided all thecomponents (sensors, the Dwenguino board and mo-tors) and an incomplete source code. Participants hadto build the electronic circuit and complete the code.Additional information and answers to questions wereprovided on demand, by the tutoring volunteers.

Building ArtBots to Attract Students into STEM Learning 5

2.3.3 Mechanics

For the mechanical part of the robot development, wesupplied participants with a broad range of materialsand tools. We set up a live demonstration and try-out for both hand and power tools available in theworkshop. To learn the names of the tools available inthe workshop, overcoming the language diversity of thegroup, we organized games. We did this to avoid givingan extensive enumeration and description of each tool.We also discussed safety measures for correct handlingof the tools.

Following up to this introduction, we elaborated onappropriate material and tool selection for different ap-plications, as well available materials for joining tech-niques such as (hot) gluing, bolting, screwing, nailingand interlocking.

When prototyping a robot, Computer Aided Design(CAD) can be used for a better 3D visualisation andcommunication of different concepts and ideas. To in-troduce the basics of 3D modeling, we gave a shortdemonstration followed by individual practice in re-drawing simple existing objects. We used Autodesk’s123D Design4 for designing some of the more complexrobots’ parts. The majority of those custom developedparts were later produced through additive manufac-turing, also known as 3D printing. To warrant successof the 3D printing process, participants received easy-to-understand guidelines.

2.4 From idea to realisation

During the crash courses, we, the organisers, gatheredand clustered the robot designs (i.e. the sketches) basedon the concepts within the design. For example, multi-ple participants wanted to build a robot that integratedsome action painting (e.g. throwing or shooting paint).And thus, we put together all ideas related to actionpainting. The clustering process was performed withoutany interference from participants. Consequently, theclustering did not consider age, cultural background orgender of the participants. This resulted in 12 clustersand 12 teams, with ideas varying from action paintingto abstract interactive ArtBots.

After the crash courses, we asked the participantsto find their team mates within the assigned clusters.Next, we asked them to refine their ideas about pro-gramming, electronics and mechanics with respect totheir robot designs, and start the building process. Me-chanical components, motors, microcontroller boards

4 A basic and intuitive freeware CAD tool http://www.123dapp.com/design

Fig. 4 Some photographs taken during the building process

and sensors were provided to the participants as ba-sic building blocks for their robot. Additionally, partic-ipants had access to all the necessary tools to build theirrobot. This included computers, 3D printers, millingmachines, soldering stations etc. As the timeline in Fig-ure 1 shows, the building process was spread over threedays and took the largest part of the available timeframe. Action pictures of the students during the build-ing process are given in the pictures on Figure 4.

Although some groups had to work until the verylast minute, all 12 teams managed to finishing theirrobot. Most robots could paint by using stamps, brushes,dripping and shooting mechanisms, while some otherrobots were more abstract, including interactive poeticrobots and a block collecting robot. Figure 5 gives fourexamples.

2.5 Social activities

In order to provide some distraction, social activitieswere organised which varied from short in-between ac-tivities such as taking a 3D scan of your face and 3D

6 Francis wyffels et al.

Fig. 5 A selection from the realised ArtBots: a paint shootingrobot, a dripping robot, a block collecting robot and a soundregistering robot.

printing it, and playing sports games. Additionally, weorganised some longer activities such as an afternoonvisit to the historical town centre of Ghent.

2.6 Exhibition

The last ArtBots day was dedicated to an exhibition,that was held at the Verbeke venue. All 12 robots werepresented by their makers to a broad audience of par-ents, teachers and sponsors. The main event on the ex-hibition was a live painting session during which allpainting robots were put on a huge canvas to co-create

a painting. In Figure 6 we show snapshots of the event,as well some of the resulting paintings.

3 Results and discussion

As stated in the introduction, the goal of our activ-ity was threefold: (1) provide technical knowledge androbot building experience; (2) cause a cross-interculturalinteraction and (3) train technology ambassadors whostimulate friends and other students to get involved intechnology. In order to evaluate whether these goalsare met or not we observed our participants thoroughlyduring the activities and conducted a post-survey toquestion the participants about their experiences. Oursurvey was completed by 26 out of 51 of the partici-pants.

3.1 Students perspective on difficulty

One of our goals was to provide technical knowledgeand robot building experience. While we did not mea-sure the knowledge acquired by the students during ouractivity, we can say that all students participated inthe building process and thus experienced the processof building robots. In order to get acquainted with thestudents’ perceived difficulties we asked them to tell uswhat they found hard and what easy. The answers aresummarized in Figure 7 which shows that programmingwas perceived as the hardest to learn, while no studentreported mechanics as hard to learn. Electronics ap-pears as a middle ground between these two.

Within the group of participants who completed thesurvey it seems that the more a skill departs from ev-eryday experience, the hardest is to learn it. This obser-vation is anecdotal, as the amount of answers is not rep-resentative, and it coincides with the observation madeby tutors and with the intuitive idea of learning be-ing bootstrapped by the affordances5 provided by theobjects manipulated [Given, 2002]. It might also be aconsequence of the reduced time dedicated to practisethis skill.

We read this perceived difficulty as an indicationthat the tools used in the learning of these skills need tobe developed further to offer more affordances: to bringthe skills and concepts closer to everyday experience.This is also known as the virtual-to-real problem [Car-bajal and Wyffels, 2015]. In the mind of the participant,there are always expectations about what their robot

5 The affordances of an object are the opportunities it of-fers to interact with it, e.g. a piece of wood can be rotatedby hand, texture and shape can be sensed by touch, it can bepushed/pulled/lifted, etc.; cf. the source code of a program.

Building ArtBots to Attract Students into STEM Learning 7

Fig. 6 The exhibition with an ArtBots fight and some of the resulting paintings.

Fig. 7 Difficulty of topics as perceived by the participants. The nodes show the topics that participants reported as easy or hard tolearn. The arrows go from “easy” to “hard”, with the width of the arrows indicating the percentage of participants that completedthe survey (total number next to the arrow). Most students found programming difficult to learn and no student found mechanicsdifficult to learn.

should do (e.g. its behaviour). These expectations canbe expressed in natural language quite well, e.g. "WhenI press this button, my robot should start" or "Whenthe light is too low the robot should turn around". Theparticipant can picture these ideas in their mind’s robotsimulator. More often than not, these ideas are a sim-plification of the robot’s real behaviour. Consequently,when they need to bring these ideas down to the realhardware, some unforeseen aspects of the hardware willbecome important, making the translation from virtualto real less direct.

We think that by integrating an intermediate learn-ing step which involves adding abstraction layers tohardware and software, this virtual-to-real problem be-comes easier to tackle for the participant. For this wecould for example include a robot simulator before switch-ing to real robots. This kind of development are nowcommon in physics, geometry and algebra 6, but theyare lacking in the field of robotics despite the huge ad-vances brought by the open hardware community.

3.2 Dealing with dangerous tools during robotconstruction

Empowering teenagers to work with both hand andpower tools requires a thoughtful approach. During the

6 https://phet.colorado.edu/ and https://www.geogebra.org/

live demonstration and try-out of the available tools,the students were asked to discuss the points of atten-tion and safety rules. Instead of imposing safety mea-sures, it is important to let the students come up withsome self-evident measures by themselves, such as wear-ing safety goggles and ear protection during cuttingoperations, only using paints, solvents or torches inwell-ventilated rooms, etc. Less comprehensible mea-sures, such as not wearing safety gloves while using fastrotating power tools (e.g. miter saws, band sanders),were explained thoroughly. An appropriate supervisionof the teenagers is important to prevent injuries [Peter-son et al., 1993], alongside raising awareness of possiblesafety risks, especially in a mix of teenagers of stronglyvarying ages.

We draw a more general conclusion: giving respon-sibility to teenagers in handling dangerous situations,preceded by a discussion about safety in which there isroom for the teenagers’ own input, will have an overallpositive effect on safety [Zaske, 2015]. This correspondswith the observations we made during the activities. Allparticipants, including the youngest ones, handled thedangerous tools with care as instructed by the tutors.

3.3 Observed social behaviour

On the first day, participants grouped on small groupswith people from their school. However, after the brain-

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Fig. 8 This infographic illustrates the interaction between par-ticipants from different countries. The thicker the arrow, themore students interacted with someone of a different nation-ality. Note that there are no leaving arrows from the Dutchstudents since they did not complete the surveys.

storm session the students were put together accordingthe similarity of their ideas. This resulted in groupsof mixed nationalities and social backgrounds. The so-cial interaction as perceived by the participants (par-ticipants were asked with whom they had interacted) isvisualised in Figure 8. The thicker the arrow, the morestudents interacted with someone of a different nation-ality. The size of the arrows were normalised with re-spect to the amount of students that completed ourpost-survey. Note that there is no leaving arrow fromthe Dutch students, although they interacted with otherstudents, simply because none of the Dutch studentscompleted the survey.

By looking at the graph one notices immediatelystrong cultural differences in openness and willingnessto interact with people from other cultures. For ex-ample, all Argentine students interacted with studentsfrom other nationalities. This was despite their limitedEnglish proficiency and the fact that the Argentine stu-dents were the farthest from home. On the other handwe noted limited interaction from the Walloon studentswhich is confirmed by our survey. Nevertheless we cansay that our activity succeeded in achieving a cross-cultural collaboration between the participating stu-dents. This is expressed greatly by the following quoteof one of the Irish participants: The most important les-son that I learned is that international barriers should

not stop you from making friends. I learned this becauseI made new friends from Belgium, Netherlands and Ar-gentina. The observed dynamics in the group brain-storming, or collaboratively generating ideas throughidea sharing, supports the results of Wang et al. [2011]that introducing conceptual diversity, such as culturaldifference internal to a multicultural group, sparks moreideas and improves creativity.

3.4 Becoming technology ambassadors

An important aspect of the learning process is how en-joyable it is for the students. It has been observed inthe past [Wyffels et al., 2010] that building robots canbe used as a tool to learn how to solve problems whichwould be otherwise considered too abstract and tedious.This was also confirmed during our activity. The stu-dents were so engaged into building ArtBots that it washard to convince them to go to a closing party with aDJ, drinks and candies (e.g. one of the social activi-ties) on Sunday evening. In our survey the participantsgraded the ArtBots event with 8.6 points out of 10.Additionally, the students’ answers in our post-surveyreflect their enthusiasm about the activities:

– Un nuevo concepto de arte, que inspira para vermas allá de los estándares propuestos; la creatividadpuede llevarnos a construir robots originales y másútiles. (Translation from Spanish) A new art conceptthat inspires to look beyond the standard; creativitycan make us build orginal and more useful robots.

– I learned that with enthusiasm and compromise Ican try to make a better world. The world can bemore humane.

– Als je met een groepje samenwerkt je, onder eenbeetje druk en tijdsgebrek, heel coole dingen kanmaken! (Translation from Dutch) When you worktogether in a team, under a little bit of time pressure,you can create very cool things!

– Il faut persister dans le travail que nous faisons ettrouvé des solutions quand un problème se présente.(Translation from French) By persisting in the workwe found solutions whenever a problem occurred

– To open your eyes, there is more in the world thanjust internet.

3.5 Final remarks

The design and construction of a robot are not sim-ple tasks and, unequivocally, the builder will face un-certainty. Under the right conditions this uncertainty

Building ArtBots to Attract Students into STEM Learning 9

provides a healthy amount of frustration and fuels cu-riosity. The particular way in which the robot build-ing task challenges students keeps them motivated andgives them impetus to overcome frustration. This is thefeature that makes robotic activities suited for manyaudiences and learning objectives.

A salient feature of robotic activities such as Art-Bots, is that they induce inquisitive attitudes in theparticipants. This was highlighted during the crash courses,see sections 2.3.1 and 2.3.2. Admittedly, the task “builda robot that makes art” is vaguely defined. Neverthe-less, is this vagueness that gives power to the approach.Granting that motivation is not an issue, when facedwith an insurmountable lack of knowledge about some-thing (maybe a tool, a sensor, the use of a device) stu-dents naturally engage in inquisitive behavior. Studentsseek for the missing knowledge on the internet, ask theirteam mates or the tutors. The benefit of this emergentbehavior is twofold. First, students train their abilitiesto pose question to others, question about extraordi-nary things, of which they might not know much about.The process of formulating intelligible questions is fun-damental in the process of understanding and inherentto the inquiry-based learning process [Colburn, 2000].This also endorses the effectiveness of interactive learn-ing: you learn a lot more, faster and durable by doingit yourself than passively listening to a teacher [Hake,1998, Crouch and Mazur, 2001]. Secondly, the tutorsreceive direct feedback on what topic cause the mostproblems for a group of students and/or what topicis most interesting for the group. This helps with thesteering of the ongoing event and provides extremelyuseful information for the design of future activitieswith similar student groups. In terms of scientific lit-eracy, the ArtBots project complies with the recom-mendations of Kesidou and Koppal [2004] of showingrelevance in science education and of paying attentionto what students are thinking.

Another positive aspect of starting from an openproblem or context, is that it removes structure fromthe learning process. It is remarkable how the reduc-tion of structure can spark creativity and inventive-ness. Although the reduction of structure can gener-ate unwieldy frustration, it also allows each participantto adapt the learning process to their own pace, needsand curiosity. The hands-on approach makes this pos-sible: using tools as a means to an end, providing emer-gent learning experiences centered on the participants’ideas and interests, creating the opportunity to exploreone’s own creative potential. Finally, by adopting themaker mindset, participants become producers insteadof users, clients or consumers of technology.

Art is just one of the many non-technical disciplinesthat can be combined with engineering and science.Fields related to history (e.g. archeology) could be com-bined in events when a technology of the past is beingreproduced in the present; or when a technology thatwas crucial for a historical event (e.g. enigma in WWII)is being reproduced. Similarly, literature can be com-bined with story telling and programming, advertise-ment and sociological models can be introduced usingsimulated agents or interactive machines [Bogost, 2010].The combinations are endless, we need only experimentand dare to break the pedagogical conventions.

4 Conclusion

Taken as a whole, the underlying framework of thisstudy suggests a fluid interaction among robot, student,and trainer. Trainers facilitate access to robots and me-diate related interactions with students, while robotsare suitable for manipulations appropriate to the learn-ing tasks. Students engage in flexible, active, and inte-grated learning, they explore and test designs and so-lutions. We conclude that by integrating arts and othersocial fields into STEM, one cannot only establish in-creased learning but also captivate a broader audienceand tackle differences in age, gender and socio-culturalbackgrounds.

However, one must be aware of the fact that such ed-ucational activities might ask of a higher commitmentof educators. A solution for this could be involving otheractors such as parents with technical or artistic back-ground. Moreover, we also found that the acquisition ofskills with fewer affordances (e.g. programming) requiredeveloped teaching tools, more time, and guidance.

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank all the volunteers andorganisations7 involved in the project. Without theirsupport the ArtBots project would not have been pos-sible. Additionally, we would like to thank all the par-ticipants for their enthusiasm and willingness to learn.We would like to thank Cedric Verhelst for providingall the photographs in this paper. The project was partof the Google RISE (Roots in Science and Engineering)2014 program.

7 Please refer to http://www.dwengo.org/projects/artbots for a complete overview.

10 Francis wyffels et al.

Author contribution

All authors have contributed equally to the writing ofthis manuscript. The order of the authors list is inversealphabetical; it is arbitrary and not a hierarchy.

Conflicts of interest

Several authors are active members of the nonprofit or-ganisations Dwengo vzw and Dwengo Helvetica.

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