Didactic Material Development for Robotics in Non-Formal Technology Education

This article details the experience of the engineering team and young technology club tutors developing didactic material for non-formal teaching of robotics in Maloka, an Interactive Science and Technology Center in Bogota, Colombia. It describes the processes of design, prototyping and evaluation of a phototropic robot, used as a motivational tool for children and youngsters. These audiences are interested on learning robotics and related topics such as mechanics, electronics and control. The process has three general stages, the first one is the definition of the pedagogic and technical guidelines that orientates the robot, followed by the formal design and the construction of prototypes, and finally, an evaluation process in non-formal education scenarios with different audiences. The document defines a set of components of evaluation that allow the analysis of the didactic material's motivational effectiveness: functionality, communication, interactivity and backgrounds recognition. The exercise results point out that a successful motivational experience depends on the technical reliability of the robot, the methodology used to explore and experiment, and the support material that guides the experience