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LEGO® Robot Vehicle Lesson Plans
NCSU, UF, and FIU have offered the LEGO® Robot Vehicle Lesson Plans for Secondary Education. The Introduction to Transportation Engineering curriculum, developed at UF, is being offered to students in 5th to 8th grades. The lessons contain the fundamentals of transportation engineering, which will teach students how advanced technology is integral to solving transportation problems. UF has worked with a Girl Scout troop and developed a partnership with a local science museum, the Cade Museum. UFTI teamed with the Cade Museum to host a workshop on October 26, 2012 and February 15, 2013 with a total of 26 attendees. Instructors guided students through modules to teach them how an intelligent vehicle can help mitigate congestion through the use of sensors and computer programming. Vehicle programming exercises include the moving of the intelligent vehicle, following a route, detecting pedestrians and emergency vehicles, and calculating travel distance and travel time. Students learn the extent to which transportation affects the quality of life in our society.
The revised one-day format was well received and made available for download after it was tested at the first workshop. The curriculum has been downloaded 50 times all over the country for consideration and use in classroom and afterschool programs. The curriculum is now featured at www.transportationcareers.org, a resource for teachers.
The Center for Transportation and the Environment (CTE) at NCSU received a STRIDE workforce development grant for a workshop that uses lesson plans and LEGO® robot vehicles to introduce middle school students to congestion mitigation solutions, the importance of modeling and assessment of advanced technologies and Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) with respect to congestion mitigation, and improvements of traffic signal systems to reduce delays in urban corridors. These workshops, consisting of five, 1.5 hour, after-school lessons developed by UF, are scheduled to be delivered by an NCSU civil engineering graduate student late August or early September 2013, to students at the Centennial Campus Magnet Middle School on the campus of NCSU. Students will be exposed to computers, basic computer programming, and mathematics as it relates to the tasks and robots as tools.
Florida International University will be implementing the lesson plans in their summer 2013 program.
Two students with a LEGO© robot.
