Today, there are a multitude of initiatives that favor the learning of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) and educational robotics (ER). Thanks to the available means, it is very easy to access a wide variety of tools based on programmable hardware. Although there are many options, most of them either require a high economic investment or require a great deal of time for the development of educational activities. Through the results shown in this paper, the great potential of Scratch as a solution for students who are just starting out in the knowledge related to STEM and ER is shown. To show the usefulness of Scratch a course has been designed, which dedicates three modules to the use of Scratch. The three modules have different levels of difficulty for the students, a basic level of difficulty, another intermediate level of difficulty and a last module with an advanced degree of difficulty.

Contribution: This work studies how to integrate massive open online courses (MOOCs) into traditional, face-to-face, Undergraduate Engineering Courses. Background: MOOCs emerged as an innovative trend in online learning with distinctive and attractive features, such as ease of access and cost effectiveness for large audiences. For this reason, they have attracted a lot of attention for their potential in contributing to global challenges in contemporary Engineering education. However, the integration of MOOCs into traditional, on-campus courses and programs in higher education remains an open problem. Research Question: What is the most effective MOOC-blending strategy for traditional, on-campus engineering programs? Methodology: To answer this question, first a literature review was conducted on the utilization of MOOCs within face-to-face Undergraduate Education. Based on this literature review, this work advocates for the MOOC-based flipped (MBF) classroom as the strategy with the highest potential for MOOC-based blending. The main pedagogical and design principles of this methodology are described and a case study is presented on a cohort of students (N $~=~$ 23) enrolled in a Digital Signal Processing course within an Undergraduate Electronics Engineering Program. This is a position paper based on evidence from the literature, but the case study is used to illustrate how the MBF design principles can be implemented in practice. Findings: The results suggest that the MBF methodology is a growing trend in Undergraduate Engineering Education with the potential to facilitate student’s active learning in synchronous face-to-face sessions while fostering the adoption and usage of MOOCs.

New social learning demands are fostered by continuous learning culture and self-learning environments. This demanding scenario requires ubiquitous educational environments without temporal restrictions. For these reasons, educational institutions increasingly rely on remote laboratories (RLs) as educational tools in order to provide real-world experiences in science education. RLs present several advantages to students which have been widely reported. Although quite powerful, RLs have intrinsically some drawbacks. While some of these drawbacks are inherent to the remote interaction and cannot be addressed, such as the impossibility to provide manual skill, many others derive from technical constraints. Traditionally, the approach to deal with these limitations on the performance is based on the redesign and improvement of the RL. However, due to the number of operating systems, an alternative approach is open for a RL: Virtual Instruments System in Reality (VISIR). VISIR is a RL designed to construct and test electrical/electronic circuits. The possibility of building a federation of VISIR nodes emerged from the actual needs detected by the VISIR community. In this paper, we describe a federation of VISIR nodes reporting the architecture implemented for the federation and the integration of the resulting federated resources into the different learning environments provided by the institutions to their students.

This paper shows the development of two new experimental exercises that are at the top of the state-of-the-art platforms for setting up, wiring, and measuring electronic circuits online, virtual instrument systems in reality (VISIR), allowing: 1) non-isolated linear regulated dc/dc converter and 2) non-isolated switching-regulated dc/dc converter. Those experiments are part of a new setup in the VISIR oriented to master as well as experienced students and users that would like to increase their experience in industrial electronics and power components management. The development of the two experiments is explained along with the necessary configuration to the core-platform VISIR. This is preceded by a brief overview of VISIR, including its hardware and software components. Finally, the remote experimental results obtained are presented.

The aim of this paper is to introduce the use of Crumble, an emerging tool, to guide the introduction to educational robotics as the second step in introducing students to robotics. Robotics requires various skills such as systems thinking, programming mentality, active learning, mathematics, science, judgment and decision making, good communication, technological design, complex problem solving and persistence. These skills can be easily developed using Crumble. The results of the educational robotics course demonstrate how children with previous Scratch programming experience, but no physical robot experience can continue the learning process through classroom experiences. The result of this work shows that it is better to adapt the difficulty to each of the children. Finally, it is important to combine theory and practice in order to include fun tasks intertwined with the challenges of applying theory to problem solving.

Training is critical on engineering and technology disciplines, and it must be used to encourage today’s children and youngsters to become the engineers and scientists of the future. For this reason, the Techno Museum Project carried out a series of workshops that used robotics as a motivational item to bring electronics and programming closer to children from 6 to 18 years. These topics are, a priori, commonly considered complex. The effects of these experiences on engineering and science understanding were analyzed. This work presents those analyses, which prove that learning scenarios based on the use of robotic equipment increases the motivation and curiosity of children and young people towards the use of new technologies. Motivation promotes their will to understand engineering and science. The paper shows the processes carried out by the Techno Museum Project. As for the results, a set of questions was asked to each of the participants in the experience. We will conclude that the use of mechatronics and robotics on education is a powerful motivational tool to enhance the interests of children and young people with minimal training on science and engineering.