Designing Design Courses
Exemplified by a high school mechatronics course
Eli Kolberg, Yoram Reich, Ilya Levin
News items documenting winning the Trinity College Fire Fighting Robot Contest
11th Contest – 2004
The following new item appeared in http://www.engadget.com/entry/1127914145845557/ (red highlight is ours). In the article, Peter Rojas, the poster, is puzzled about the Israeli teams’ domination of the Fire Fighting Robot Contest. It turns out that there is a good reason behind this success and also this success is happening year after year. The reason behind the growing success is a particular curriculum that is being designed to maximize the benefit of the students learning experience. Consequently, it is not a mystery but a consequence of a careful design.
Arutz Sheva (Israeli News Channel (http://www.israelnationalnews.com/print.php3?what=news&id=61615 )
Part of the official results of 2004 (http://www.trincoll.edu/events/robot/Results04/default.asp )
12th Contest – 2005
Official results from the contest website (http://www.trincoll.edu/events/robot/Prizes/default.asp)
The 2005 results show that the course design works even better than last year. The robots whose designers participated in the course program won first places (red highlights are ours). The results are more profound because this year the teachers are independent of the research team. Therefore, the results transfer to other teachers and with a great deal of success. (See pictures of the competitions and a video of the winning robot.)
The scores of the winning robots (http://www.trincoll.edu/events/robot/Prizes/WebStatus.asp) show the difference between these and other robots. By and large, there is a difference between the Israeli robots coming from the project and others with respect to robustness of the design.
Robotics Daily news item (http://www.roboticsdaily.com/headline/Israeli-robot-builders-triumph.html)
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modified: 5/8/2005 5:35:00 PM