A Categorizing Taxonomy for Occurring Problems During Robotics Activities

Robotics and other interactive devices are new forms of learning in computer science education. Currently there is a lot of research going on with respect to appropriate constructions and other device focused investigations. Recent papers describe students' problems as a side product and without a deeper analysis. However, to implement these devices in a learning setting we need to be aware of concrete problems the students are struggling with. The goal of this paper is to give first empirical results concerning the identified research gap. Therefore, we observed students working with two different devices to figure out occurring problems and problem sources students are confronted with. We found hardware, software and environment as three main problem sources. Additionally, difficulties lie in mathematics and physics, which seems to be more an outside problem source. The students seem to have in particular difficulties with ambiguous problems. As a next step we will develop scaffolds to support students' evaluation of the problems and to help the students to categorize the problems they have to tackle.