Intensive Robotics Course Projects Improve Higher Education Students' Intrinsic Motivation and Learning Outcomes

With the fast-evolving applications of AI and machine learning, the applications and capabilities of robots have seen a rapid growth. This makes learning robotics a trending exercise today. Therefore, a special attention needs to be put on robotics education to ensure that relevant concepts are covered, while driving the interest and motivation of the learners. This research explores a case study of teaching robotics courses to undergraduate and master's students at the University of Eastern Finland. We evaluated the leveraged intrinsic motivation of the students during an intensive course project work that account to 50% of the total course evaluation. The study spans two consecutive deliveries of the courses and uses pre- and post-course surveys based on Intrinsic Motivation Instrument (IMI). The results show that the intensive use of project-based practice and learning has significantly increased the students' intrinsic motivation towards robotics and motivates them to further advance their knowledge in field. On the other hand, the level of stress and anxiety that the students experienced did not significantly improve during the course as they described the issue remained a challenge as learning robotics was a new experience to many of them and that it is an open field one can practice his/her creativity in the limitless dimension of the discipline. Our results provide recommendations for the good practices of teaching robotics at university level and discusses the potential facilities that a more effective teaching may require.