Exploring behaviors & collaborative mapping through Mindstorms robots: A case study in applied social constructionism at senior-project level

Constructionism, a term first coined by Seymour Papert, is a learning theory based on constructivism, which however also holds that learning can happen most effectively when people are also active in making objects in the real world. In this paper, we will present a case study of an application of constructionism at the undergraduate senior project level. More specifically, we will describe a robotics project that took place in our lab, which aimed towards providing a strong hands-on background in the basics of robotics and the fundamentals of the research process to a group of four final-year students. During this project, the students experienced basics of team working, flexible project management, and intra- as well as extra-group constructionist tuition, as well as aspects of real-world research. Furthermore, they were able to gain experience in three programming languages, build and successfully demonstrate basic behaviors and collaborative mapping using the Mindstorms robots, and create a theoretical framework incorporating and providing novel extensions to their methods.