Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Usability Testing

Hello!

This week we are running a usability test for the site. If you'd like to help, here's the test:





Thank you for volunteering to help out with this project!


As a bit of background, the site's purpose is to serve as a platform for robotics educators to share and collaborate on courses.  Over the next 30 minutes or so, you will be testing the usability of the site by acting as a user: an educator contributing to the site.  You will be given some content to add to the site and a list of questions to answer as you go along or after you are done with your task.


Focus Questions and things to Look For:
1. how accessible is this site and the content in it?
2. how easy is it to upload content?
3. how easy is it to navigate and find content on the site?
4. does this seem easy to collaborate on?
5. is the content is understandable and accurate?
6. does the “how to contribute” require too much prior knowledge? if so, where did you feel lost or where do you think others would feel lost?
7. additional comments?


Tasks
1. Go to the website and find out How to Contribute
2. Find the course called “Typos.” Find one typo, fix it, and submit your contribution.
3. Answer the questions! (email to mliebmanpelaez@gmail.com)


Thanks!

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Call for Feedback from ROS Edcuation Community

Hello all,

It's been almost two months, but finally I am writing again to share with you our ROS/robotics education project. 

For those of you who don't remember, my name is Mariana and I am working with Tully Foote and OSRF to help facilitate teaching robotics courses using the TurtleBot.  We are using a Git web repository to create an online database for robotics courses.  The idea is to have a website where educators can collaboratively design these courses.  In turn, users can search for course material based on keywords relevant to the robotics material they are looking to teach or learn.  (I have included a more detailed description of the site further on in the email.)

I am writing to you just as we are finishing up our first prototype of the site (https://tfoote.github.io/design/).  Before we continue with this project, we feel it is important to first gather feedback from you and others in the world of robotics education.

The main questions we want to ask are:

- Is this something you would be interested in?
- What features/services would you like to see in something like this?
- How do you think you or others would use this site?  Would you want to use the site during a learning activity or just pull material from it? 
- Is this something you'd be interested in as a resource for your students? If so, how would you want your students to interact with a site like this? (A tool to enable more interactive learning? Supplementary or extra material to give to students?)
- Do you have any experience with something similar to this that might be useful for us to know about?
- Any other comments/suggestions?

In addition we are also trying to figure out a good way to give users an incentive to collaborate on these courses.  So far, we have thought of introducing an edge of competition, (perhaps using sponsors for prizes), publicity, making it a game, and giving contributors recognition.  What would motivate you to contribute to something like this? If you have any input, please let us know!

I realize that for those in the USA, it's a holiday today (happy 4th of July!).  But if at some point in the next week or so you find time to give us some feedback, that would be greatly appreciated! We can only really move forward with this project if we know what the community is looking for :) 

If you aren't already a part of the ROS Education special interest group, here's the link: http://wiki.ros.org/groovy/Planning/education - if you scroll down, you'll find the link to the google group (https://groups.google.com/group/ros-sig-education).  Also, if you know someone not in this thread who would be interested in this project, please feel free to forward this email to them!


Best,
Mariana Liebman-Pelaez


****MORE DETAILED DESCRIPTION DESCRIPTION OF SITE HERE****

So far in our project we've set up the Git online web repository and uploaded some example content (TurtleBot intro tutorials and other example material).  The content of the repository is organized in a hierarchy that resembles a course syllabus.  Namely, there are courses which consist of units which in turn can have topics (lessons, tutorials, or challenges).  

Each of these elements contains a header which has the title, the type (course, unit, lesson, tutorial, or challenge), and abstract, tags (used for searching), skills, prerequisites, and for units and courses, sub-content.  These headers are useful when searching for content as well as for referencing and organizing material.  That way, all topics belong to a unit and all units belong to a course.  In addition, in order to minimize redundancy, topics and units can be cross-referenced across units and courses respectively.

Here's a more detailed description of what we envisioned all these elements to be:

Course: This is basically a syllabus and contains the units that will be covered in the course.  Metadata in the header for the course includes: title, abstract, tags , prerequisites (by course or by topic), skills, requirements, and version/compatibility tags.  Courses can also contain material (for example, an introduction to the material covered in the course... etc).

Unit: These are the various topics covered in the course.  We thought of the units as individual folders that contain all the material; any lesson, tutorial or challenge will belong to at least one unit. Units can also contain material (for example, an introduction to the material covered in the unit... etc).

Lesson: Lessons will be where the educators present all the information and building blocks they are giving to the students - in slides, videos, notes, diagrams… etc. A topic can have multiple lessons, maybe to give students stopping points to apply the information they are receiving. (*note* - as of now, any external documents such as powerpoints will need to be attached as a link).

Tutorial: This is where students can be walked-through an application of what they are learning.  If it’s a new programming concept for instance, it can be a series of questions that gets the student to walk through an example of the material.  (The idea here is really similar to what we think of online tutorials - these are step by step instructions and examples).

Challenge:  This is the fun part.  Here is where educators can post material that get the student to apply and expand on the concepts covered.  Here is where you would find homework problems, problem sets, projects, open ended questions… etc.  We were thinking of labelling challenges as either “recommended” or “extended.”

The idea is that with this hierarchy, it will be relatively easy to upload material and search through it.  All elements (courses, units, lessons, tutorials, and challenges) will be indexed and will reference the material they belong with.  In addition, units and the elements they contain can also be cross-referenced if material is applicable to more than one course and/or unit.

Here are some features that we currently have for the site:

  • Ability to embed youtube videos and code blocks
  • In the future, we are thinking to embed a simulator using gazebo to make the site more interactive for students. (thoughts???)
  • Anything else???

Contributing:
Right now, the way to contribute to the site is by following the standard protocol of using git.  One would clone the repository, add or modify any material in its appropriate folder (following a template), and push it back.  The language used is markdown.

Monday, July 7, 2014

Call for Feedback

Last Friday, we finally finished our prototype for the site.  In order to move forward with the project, we felt it necessary to call for feedback from the ROS education community and others involved in robotics education. I wrote an email on Friday, similar to the one I had originally sent out to the ROS education community, only this time updating them about the state of the project.

I summarized the work we had done up until this point, provided them with a link to the site as it is right now, and prompted them with the following questions:


- Is this something you would be interested in?
- What features/services would you like to see in something like this?
- How do you think you or others would use this site?  Would you want to use the site during a learning activity or just pull material from it? 
- Is this something you'd be interested in as a resource for your students? If so, how would you want your students to interact with a site like this? (A tool to enable more interactive learning? Supplementary or extra material to give to students?)
- Do you have any experience with something similar to this that might be useful for us to know about?
- Any other comments/suggestions?

At the bottom of the email, I provided a more in-depth description of the work we had done and the questions we still had lingering.  For interest in participating in the conversation regarding this project, check out the ROS Education google group at this site: http://wiki.ros.org/groovy/Planning/education

Till next time!

Sunday, June 8, 2014

Project Updates

In the past couple weeks, we have continued moving forward with our site.  The Git web repository is up and running and I am currently filling it in with material from the ROS wiki TurtleBot tutorials in order to test out the system.  In addition, we have received some feedback that we are incorporating into our work.  

Last week, I met with Chris Rogers, professor in the Tufts University Mechanical Engineering department and Co-Director of the Center for Engineering Education and Outreach. I came into the meeting wanting to know if, as a robotics educator and someone with years of experience creating online education resources, this is something he'd be interested in.  Chris' initial reaction was that yes, an online resource such as this one would be great, especially since right now a lot of educators turn to google for online resources and there isn't really a consolidated source for material.  However, Chris had several comments on our approach that we are taking into consideration as we continue to move forward with this. These are:

  •  Getting users (educators) to upload material to the site.  It takes a lot of time and energy to upload educational material, more so when it needs to be formatted to mesh with the rest of the site.  We need to think of incentives and motivation for users to collaborate on these courses.  Possible solutions to this problem are introducing some form of game or competition, acknowledgement, publicity, funding, and getting people to vote for material they find useful/helpful.  Any suggestions are welcome!
  •  Usability - educators are generally looking for something that is easy to incorporate in the classroom.  Because of this, we might want to consider the "out of the box experience."  In other words, will teachers go to the site and see a long and cryptic set of instructions?  Or will they see something that is ready to use both for themselves and their students?
  •  Presentation - we want to think about how the material in the site will be used by students.  Whether the audience is a group of graduate students or high school students, will this just be a bunch of tutorials that students can sit through?  Or will the content on this site prompt classes to be more hands on, interactive, and creative?

As for the site, I am still uploading content and we are continuously checking for bugs and areas of improvement.  Our next goal is to produce a polished prototype by by June 20 to send out to the robotics education community.  This will involve uploading all the content from the TurtleBot online tutorials, making a course on "How to Make a Course," trying to find solutions to the issues brought up by Chris, and trying to make the site as bug-free and usable as possible.

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

More Detailed Description of Course Elements

In the previous two posts I talked about organizing the content of our site like this: courses are comprised of units which in turn contain lessons, tutorials, and challenges.  Here are descriptions for each of these elements.

Course: This is basically a syllabus and contains the units that will be covered in the course.  Metadata in the header for the course includes: title, abstract, tags , prerequisites (by course or by topic), skills, requirements, and version/compatibility tags.


Unit: These are the various topics covered in the course.  We can think of the units as individual folders that contain all the material; any lesson, tutorial or challenge will belong to at least one unit. 


Lesson: Lessons will be where the educators present all the information and building blocks they are giving to the students - in slides, videos, notes, diagrams… etc. A topic can have multiple lessons, maybe to give students stopping points to apply the information they are receiving.


Tutorial: This is where students can be walked-through an application of what they are learning.  If it’s a new programming concept for instance, it can be a series of questions that get the student to walk through an example of the material.  (The idea here is really similar to what we think of online tutorials - these are step by step instructions and examples).


Challenge:  This is the fun part.  Here is where educators can post material that get the student to apply and expand on the concepts covered.  Here is where you would find homework problems, problem sets, projects, open ended questions… etc.  The challenges will be labelled as either “recommended” or “extended.”

The idea is that with this hierarchy, it will be relatively easy to upload material and search through it.  All elements (courses, units, lessons, tutorials, and challenges) will be indexed and will reference the material they belong with.  In addition, units and the elements they contain can also be cross-referenced if material is applicable to more than one course and/or unit.  

We hope that this will produce a series of very detailed and extensive courses that educators can pull from for their own classrooms!

We welcome any and all feedback!

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Project Timeline

This is our preliminary schedule for the summer organized by week.  It contains what we have worked on so far as well as major deadlines that we have set for ourselves.  This schedule isn't set in stone - as the summer progresses we will surely modify it.  It is more meant to give us a sense of what we want to accomplish and how we are going to do it!


By week:


4/24:
  • Initial meeting
  • establish high level project goal: make it easier to teach robotics with turtlebot
4/28
  •  Preliminary research - start looking through online courses and tutorials (ROS and TurtleBot) → start thinking of ways to index courses (metadata)
  •  Set up blog
  • Start thinking about how to engage the ros-sig-education. (What to send out? What to ask community for? How would ongoing collaboration work?)
5/5:
  •  Contact education SIG collaborators - explain project and invite input 
  • Email with Bill Smart - see if we can collaborate with his proposal: we set up infrastructure, he and other educators fill in the course conten
  • First draft project timeline by Friday
  •  look into Git web repo as possible platform for website and produce example website (Tully)
  •  Start writing down taxonomy/indexing for courses by end of week
5/12:
  •  Start looking for other robotics (or just online) course resources
    • ex: Khan Academy
    • More feedback 
  • first draft of initial indices for categorizing courses and/or course material - May 16
5/19:
  • By Wednesday, populate Tully's Git web repository with intro to ROS course material


5/26:
  • Send out site to collaborators and test it out/gather feedback


6/2:


6/9:


6/16:


6/23:
  •  


6/30:


7/7:


7/14:
  • Come up with some cool/relevant challenges to include in the site?


7/21:


7/28:


8/4:


8/11:


8/18:
  • Blog video should be up and done!
  • Website should be up and running!

Project Beginnings

Hello! It's about four weeks into this project and so far we've gotten a lot done!  After the first initial meeting, we established the overarching goal for this project: to make it easier to teach ROS using TurtleBot.  Since then we have worked on narrowing down the focus of the project, reaching out to the online robotics education community, developing a schedule for the project, and developed a format for organizing and collaborating on course material.

Before delving further into what we've been working on for the past few weeks, I will start by describing what we plan to accomplish this summer.  The goal for this project is to produce a website with some example robotics courses and a way for educators to submit additional courses/course material relatively easily.  In addition, there should be a means to index and search for courses and course material based on subject, skills taught, pre-requisites, and any other "tags" associated with the content. 

We will do this by creating a Git online repository with the infrastructure required for educators to collaboratively build online courses and their relevant material.  The courses will be composed of units, which in turn contain lessons, tutorials, and challenges.  Each element (courses, units, lessons, tutorials, and challenges) will have a header containing a reference ID and meta-data that both gives users a sense of the content and acts as a means of searching for course material in the repository. Units and the content in the units can be cross-referenced between units as well as courses so that course material can be recycled if appropriate. Course material can include anything from material outlines to power point presentation files to example code. 

The idea is to collaboratively create online robotics courses that educators can both edit and pull from in order to use with their own students.

In order to get the first version of the site up an running, there was a lot of planning that needed to get done.  For the first couple weeks, I did a lot of background research learning about ROS, TurtleBot, and going through many existing online courses.  While looking though existing online course material, I took note of the differences in content, course structure, target audience, and any other relevant information.  The idea was to get a sense of what's already out there and in particular, how to categorize these courses.  This was how we settled on the different elements comprising the courses as well as how they will be tagged or referenced.  Once we had envisioned a skeleton course structure for this site, Tully created an Git online repository with blank examples of all the course elements.  My next step is to populate these elements with material pulled form the courses I initially researched.  Our main concern is to ensure that the course material indexing and navigation works well and is easy to use.

My mentor and I have also been thinking about how to engage the existing community of ROS educators (a significant portion of this project will involve outreach to the ROS education community).  We started by looking at the ros.org Special Interest Group (SIG) for education and sent an email out to the list inviting input.  We received a very promising reply from Bill Smart, Mechanical Engineering Professor at Oregon State and coordinator for the education SIG.  In his email Smart said that after a few years of loosing momentum on the online collaborative robotics education front, he is picking up steam again and is interested in coordinating with us on this project.  Since our focus is in principle geared towards using TurtleBot, our initial efforts will build an online database focusing on learning robotics with TurtleBot.  Smart is looking to start off consolidating course material for a broader spectrum of robot platforms.  However, due to the versatile and collaborative nature of the site, our project will hopefully serve as a means to produce courses for many other platforms and areas in robotics. 

With Bill Smart and the ROS education community in touch, and a prototype website, our next steps will be to test this out and hopefully start collaborating on courses!

Monday, May 5, 2014

Getting Started

Hello! My name is Mariana Liebman-Pelaez and I am using this blog to share my work for the Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF). The project Tully Foote (my mentor) and I are working on is a little open ended but has a very clear goal: to make it easier to teach robotics using Willow Garage's TurtleBot.  Since its release, the TurtleBot has exceeded many expectations by becoming a widely used platform for teaching and personalizing robots.  While there are many great examples out there of courses and projects that use the TurtleBot, we are looking to provide a space so that users and educators can share their experience using TurtleBot to collaboratively design robotics courses.  In addition, the OSRF is looking to produce a MOOC using CloudSim and the simulator Gazebo for students to learn robotics without the need of a physical TurtleBot.  The idea is to use the outcomes of the collaborative robotics course designs for this MOOC.

As a little background, I recently graduated from Tufts University with a B.S. in mechanical engineering.  During my time at school, I worked with the Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach (CEEO), teaching science and engineering to elementary school students.  We spend a lot of time discussing and working on curricula in order to improve understanding and bring in more creativity to science and engineering education.  I enjoy tinkering, running, crafty projects, gardening, travelling and cooking!