"Every freshmen should have a serious 'hands-on' learning experience." --Preliminary Findings and Recommendations of the Educational Design Project, 8/99, p.1 UTEACH is developing a hands-on 6-unit seminar in Robotics to be offered in a dorm in Spring 2000. This seminar is envisioned as a pilot program for a possible system of residence-based seminars. There is the perception by some students that the residences are places to "escape" from MIT and classes (remarked upon in the Report of the Task Force on Student Life and Learning, among other places). We understand that MIT courses are very demanding, and respect the need to be able to take a break from them, whether by going out or relaxing at home. For this reason, the residence-based class we are proposing is a fun, hand-on, pass/fail, 6-unit robotics seminar. Students in ESG have often commented that they come to the robotics lab to play and build robots as a "break from doing problem sets". This robotics seminar brings an opportunity for learning (including serious, engineering content) and play into a residence, but does not force it upon students. This robotics seminar will meet in the residence, taking over part of a lounge or some other unused room a few times a week for lectures and mainly lab sessions (where students build and program robots). The seminar will be open to all students within the residence, with freshmen especially encouraged to consider it (no background is required). A collection of resources (legos and other building materials, electronics, and tools) used in the seminar will be installed in a cabinet in the dorm, and may be made available outside of class to responsible students. This seminar covers a wide range of topics relevant to robotics, including mechanical design and construction, electronics and sensors, and programming. It is based on the highly successful and popular robotics seminars taught and developed at ESG over the past years, including SP.285: Robotics and Mechatronics Seminar and SP.293: Lego Robotics Seminar. We are exploring several methods of organizing and teaching the seminar. In particular, we are looking for ways to allow the seminar to be offered on a continuing basis, and to involve students in the organizing and teaching of the seminar. At the present time, we are considering the following structure: For the first semester the seminar is offered (Spring 2000), it will be taught by Ben Davis '99 (ESG Lecturer and UTEACH Coordinator). Ben has developed and taught several robotics and engineering-based seminars at ESG over the past years, and is developing the curriculum for this residence-based seminar. An undergraduate living in the dorm where the seminar will be taught will also be recruited to co-teach the class with Ben. After the first semester, the plan is to have one or two upperclassmen who have taken the robotics seminar take it over and teach it the following semester, and be paid for their time (details of the money for this are being arranged). This is the same way that continuity is ensured in the ESG robotics seminar, and also ensures that the seminar is constantly developing and changing. We also recommend involving a faculty member with the seminar. The faculty member would not have to develop or teach the individual classes, but could come and give occasional guest lectures, drop by and chat with students, and be someone the upperclassmen teaching the seminar could turn to for advice. In addition, having a faculty member interested in the seminar would help provide some extra continuity between terms. This arrangement allows undergraduate teachers the freedom and responsibility to organize and teach the class, but also encourages faculty-student interaction and provides a faculty resource for the student teachers, without putting heavy demands on the faculty member's time. Other details of the seminar (including which dorm it will be offered in) are still being worked out. Feel free to contact Ben Davis (bendavis@mit.edu) if you have any comments or suggestions. back to the UTEACH home page