CODI Bot: An Accessible Robot for New Coders

College students in low and middle-income countries enter undergraduate STEM programs under-prepared, with little or no prior knowledge about their chosen fields. One reasons for this is non-availability of cost effective equipment in most schools for conducting experiments to bridge the gap between theory and practical skills. LearnOBots is a startup out of the National University of Sciences and Technology at Islamabad, Pakistan, that is focusing on solving this problem. Inspired by the global Maker movement, it has developed hardware kits and lessons that have practically introduced thousands of high-school and freshmen college age learners to computer programming, robotics and embedded system design. This was achieved by conducting summer camps, winter camps, weekend camps and Maker days over the past six years that go beyond slideshows and lectures. We describe LearnOBots CODI Bot kit along with six projects that teach learners fundamentals of robotics, programming and practical problem solving. To assess the effectiveness of the developed material we conducted pre- and post-surveys with participants as well as focus groups with learners, parents and teachers. Survey and focus group results showed that after just eight lessons students demonstrated markedly improved technical/digital literacy skills and grater enthusiasm for STEM careers.