Comparing Self-Directed and Apprenticeship-Style Mentoring on Four Out-of-School Time Robotics Teams

• In Event: 35.079 - Sheraton Roundtable Session Five - Grand Centre
  In Roundtable Session: 35.079-2 - Cross-Sector Strategies for Out-of-School Time Learning

Abstract

Participation in out-of-school-time robotics programs affords students the opportunity to learn engineering, programming, and scientific skills in a competition-based environment. Mentors on these robotics teams play important roles in helping students acquire these skills. A qualitative comparative case study method is used to examine mentor involvement and associative student behavior on four veteran robotics teams. Teams displaying a higher mentor directive identified as following an apprenticeship style where mentors modeled expert techniques as students were assigned tasks and, sometimes, only learned by watching. Teams displaying a lower mentor directive identified as following a more self-directed model where mentors placed responsibility on students to explore their own choices and learned by doing.

Author

• Nathan Robert Dolenc, University of Louisiana at Lafayette