Board 164: Exploring Coaches’ Use of Engineering Notebooks in the FIRST LEGO League Challenge Robotics Competition (Work in Progress)
Michael Graffin, Rachel Sarah Sheffield, Rekha Bhan Koul · 2024
Abstract Engineering notebooks are commonly implemented in formal pre-college classroom learning environments to scaffold students' development of epistemic engineering skills and practices, supporting their collaborative engagement, knowledge construction, and communication during engineering design and STEM project-based-learning experiences. Studies conducted in formal pre-college classroom settings, informed by socio-constructivism, suggest that teachers can support students' development of epistemic skills by facilitating conversations around written prompts and templates in a scaffolded notebook or journal. The design and implementation of such notebooks in informal extracurricular learning environments, such as educational robotics competitions, is not widely understood. This work-in-progress paper presents the preliminary findings of an ongoing qualitative multiple case-study project exploring coaches and students' perspectives on the design and implementation of engineering notebooks in the FIRST LEGO League (FLL) Challenge robotics competition in Perth, Western Australia. It focuses on the findings from one of three initial case-studies examined during the 2021 competition season, between August and early December, drawing upon coach interviews, extensive semi-structured observations, and student work samples. The featured case-study was situated in a family home-school environment and involved 2 coaches and 7 of their combined 8 children. Preliminary findings suggest that the coaches' prior coaching experience informed their instructional use of engineering notebooks. Their understanding of verbal and written scaffolding strategies impacted on their design and integration of the notebook. Post-season, the coaches identified the need to use written and visual graphic organiser scaffolds to better support their students' use of the engineering notebook for technical documentation and written reflection during the FLL Challenge competition season.