Do LEGO Mindstorms motivate students in CS1?

The purpose of the research study described in this paper was to investigate the effectiveness of using LEGO Mindstorms robotic activities to influence student motivation in an introductory university computer programming course. Various aspects relating to student motivation were measured using the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire. Tests revealed no statistically significant differences between groups in relation to intrinsic goal orientation, task value, control of learning beliefs, self-efficacy, and test anxiety at the alpha = .05 level. The experiment did detect a statistically significant difference between groups in relation to extrinsic goal orientation. The LEGO group, however, showed a larger decrease in levels of extrinsic goal orientation, suggesting they were less motivated in learning the material for rewards such as grades. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, ideally a decline in extrinsic goal orientation would be accompanied by a statistically significant increase in intrinsic goal orientation suggesting students were instead motivated because they were interested in the content of the material. This was not the case in this study. Despite the lack of positive quantitative results, responses to student follow-up questions suggest that at least some of the students enjoyed the LEGO Mindstorms activities. A discussion of possible factors influencing these results is provided.