ROBOdidactics guideline – SDU Metaverse Lab

A didactic framework

This guideline for the ROBOdidactics model was developed during a didactic workshop (2021) by teachers, lecturers, and educational coordinators from various secondary education institutions, several lower secondary schools, and a university. A slight update has since then been made in connection with the development of the ROBOdidactics mobile app.

The guiding questions below should not be regarded as comprehensive or mandatory but can be taken as inspiration for further reflection.

Principle “Pick & play”: Select the elements that are most relevant to the given teaching course, typically 6-8 elements in total. It is NOT intended that all 21 elements of the model be thoroughly worked through for each course.

Order: Teaching modules can be initiated differently and therefore in the 4 different quadrants of the model. For example, impulses may come from outside when a company offers collaboration on a technological case (environment), or there may be a need to promote students’ critical reflections on a new technology (digital literacy). A new technology may have entered the market that needs to be tested (digital production), or new curricula may suggest the use of new technologies (teaching design).

Teacher Janne presents the model (in Danish):

Guiding questions

The following guiding questions refer to ROBOdidactics 2.0 (2021).

Sustainability was added as a new and important dimension in the upgraded model DigiDidactics, which originated from ‘ROBOdidactics’ after a thorough cross-national process (Sept-Oct 2024) involving Danish and German teachers, managers, and researchers.

The guiding questions will be updated according to DigiDidactics during 2025.

TEACHING DESIGN

Learning objectives

Concerns the competencies (knowledge, skills, attitudes) that students are expected to achieve during the module: technically or related to other subjects, socially, and personally. Also, refer to the regulations for the subjects.

What objectives and core content should be addressed (knowledge, skills, attitudes)?
Which subjects should be included?
How does the module make sense for a given target group?
How can existing modules be adapted to the objectives and target group?

The students´ coinfluence

Students can advantageously be involved in the planning of the module and during the process. For example, by choosing a theme, case, location, target group, role, etc.

How can students actively participate in the planning of the teaching? Can they be involved in structuring the lessons, such as mini-breaks or the sequence of working with the content?
Can students contribute issues they want to investigate? Can they, for example, choose themes for project work? How to incorporate students’ interests and daily lives?
Do students have suggestions to work with certain technologies?
Can students incorporate aspects from other subjects they have in their education?
Should students be involved in forming groups – or not?

Content, Activities, and Framework

Concerns the module’s subjects and content, with activities such as presentations, investigations, independent studies, competitions, etc. Frameworks such as location, physical set-up, and equipment.

What presentations, assignments, and activities can introduce the module? How do you guide students’ thoughts to focus on what they will work on now? Can external inspiration be drawn, for example, an expert demonstrating or explaining a technological solution?
Does the school have suitable physical settings to carry out the project? Or does the project, for example, require the use of a workshop or laboratory, virtual aids, or special computers/3D printers, etc.?
What do the framework conditions allow, and what technologies are available relative to the number of students?
Can you complete your teaching within the given time and budget, or do you need to ask for additional resources?

Students´ Learning Products

Concerns students’ submissions, possibly with requirements and specifications. For example, codes, prototypes, given solutions, presentations, posters, flowcharts, etc.

What are the students asked to produce: e.g., a programmed game, a poster, a video tutorial for other students, a video demonstrating what a robot prototype can do and how it works, a process report, a presentation?
What specifications should students potentially receive? For example, scope, technical quality, comprehensibility, valid references, etc.

Pedagogical Methods, Playground Methods

Concerns promoting students´ motivation, reflection, creativity, team building, etc. Targeted use of group work, individual performance, peer learning, etc.

What pedagogical approach do you have toward your students?
How do you work with differentiated teaching, including gender, learning preferences, educational levels?
In what way should students collaborate? How does group formation take place (e.g., group roles, gender distribution, academic levels)?
Do you use play and games for team building and/or to illustrate the content of the subjects?

Evaluations

Who evaluates what and how: Students’ learning processes and products, the module as a whole, target group satisfaction, etc.

How do you conduct assessments of students’ learning results?
How do you evaluate students’ learning processes? How do you give students feedback on their work?
How do you organize and support students’ self-evaluations and peer evaluations?
How do teachers evaluate each other?
Do you evaluate at parent meetings?
Summarize: What went well, what can be improved?

ENVIRONMENT

Career Learning

Career learning is an approach and method to promote the development of students’ competencies to choose their pesonal pathway. Tools can include activities such as transition courses, company visits, peer-to-peer teaching, information searches, etc. The activities are prepared by and with the students, while there may be assignments, and they are summarized afterward with a view to possible career choices (“before-during-after”).

What methods do you use to promote students’ career learning? Do you structure career learning activities, for example, with “before-during-after”?
How do you prepare your students to acquire study competencies?
Do you involve companies or other organizations in career learning processes?
Can/should parents be involved or others from students’ networks and environments?

Target Groups and Co-Creation

Concerns students’ and teachers’ work with stakeholders outside the school. Involvement of stakeholders in, for example, cases, studies, or events.

Which external organizations could you advantageously collaborate with?
How do real-life cases add extra value? How does the collaboration make sense for everyone? How do you ensure that the partners have influence on and benefit from the joint project?
Do companies have smaller projects/tasks/cases for co-designing a teaching module?
How and through which channels should contact with companies take place? Does the school already have contacts or a network that can be used?

Digitalization in Society

Concerns digital production in relation to societal development: Digitalization of trades, daily life, global trends, UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, etc.

Are there current issues, trends, or problems in society that your project relates to? For example, digital inclusion/exclusion, democratic issues, self-driving cars, surveillance, citizen services, strategies, etc.?
Are there international aspects that are obvious to address?
Is there a connection to (some of) the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals?
Can you incorporate data and facts from the current societal debate or from research that can support the project?

Learning in the Education Chain

Concerns creating coherent teaching modules across educational institutions and levels. Teacher-teacher collaboration, student-student tutoring, and support from management.

Which educational institutions and companies could you work with concerning your subject?
Are there parts of the module where it makes sense to relate to other educational institutions or levels?
Can the module advantageously be included in transitional collaborations?
How do you ensure the coherence of learning objectives in the education chain?
How do you communicate, develop, collaborate, and evaluate together with the other teachers in the education chain?

Business and Value Creation

Concerns collaboration with the business sector on content in teaching modules and career learning for students. Technologies in use and commercial aspects.

Which networks can you draw on to find partners from the business sector? How can you further develop your existing collaboration with companies?
Who has which contacts?
Do you use role models? For example, an engineer (possibly a former student) who gives a presentation, a female programmer, career role models from vocational education, etc.
Do you conduct user surveys?
How does the collaboration create value for you and the company? How do you determine value creation?
How can you put the technologies in a commercial context? How can you relate ideas to market needs, examine potential sales value, identify target groups, etc.?

The new guiding questions for sustainability (Oct. 24) in the context of teaching with digital production, are inspired by the aims of balancing the needs of the economy, environment, and social well-being (Brundtland report, 1987, and SDG goals, UN 2015).

DIGITAL PRODUCTION

Choice of Technologies

Concerns the choice of equipment and software for the main digital production, development environments, and user apps. Possibly also supporting technologies, such as video, image edition, etc.

What technologies will you work with? For example, various language models for generative artificial intelligence, software for the production of virtual or augmented reality, graphic production, etc.
Should students learn to program physical devices (robots, etc.)? For example, Lego Mindstorm, Arduino, mBots, microbits, etc.
Should students learn basic programming? For example, Scratch or AppLab.
Will videos or recorded presentations be made? For example, Screen-O-Matic, OBS, PowerPoint, Prezi, etc.
Should students be able to provide feedback? For example, Kahoot, Quizlet, Socratic, Google Forms, Microsoft Forms, Peergrade.io, etc.
Should students collect and store digital products? For example, Google Drive, OneDrive (in Microsoft Teams), Dropbox, etc. Check permissions.
Can all students run/have access to the programs/technologies you want to use? Can/will you use online tools (via IOS, Windows)?

Methods

The choice of methods depends on the duration of the module, educational level, types of students, and learning objectives. The methods do not necessarily exclude each other but can complement each other.

Which methods do you choose and why?
Do the methods fit the length and possibly the interdisciplinary character of the teaching module?
At what grade level is the module taking place? What structuring does it require? Is there a need for special scaffolding?

Iterative Design Processes

Concerns more open processes in longer-lasting modules, with step-by-step improvements. From freer to more structured modules with frameworks, constraints, predefined milestones, and team roles. Iterative development involves several successive rounds in the design circle (design, test, evaluation, and adjustments).

How can the module be divided into smaller parts that students can work on iteratively? How many iterations are there in the project?
What themes do the individual iterations have? Are there phase descriptions visible to the students?
What prototypes should be delivered along the way (analog or digital prototypes)?
What deadlines do the individual iterations have?
How do you review progress at the deadlines?
How do you scaffold the students at different times/phases?

Worked Examples, Pair Programming

Worked examples are digital resources/simple programs for further processing in student productions.

To what extent should detailed examples be provided for the production method that students are to learn to use?
How can “constraints” be incorporated so that the products experience different expressions and characteristics?
For shorter exercises and assignments: Have you completed the task yourself? Have you prepared an example that students can build on? What is essential to show the students so that they can continue working independently?
How and with what requirements are the worked examples expanded so that students do not simply copy?

Pair programming is done in pairs, and students develop each other’s products further. It supports collaboration and discussions. For example, every 10 minutes, they switch places in front of the computer.

Consider students’ educational levels when pairing them or other considerations to their mutual cooperation.

Play, Experiments, and Innovation

Concerns experimental approaches to technologies with minimal instruction. Possibly the use of playground methods, aimed at relationship building, idea generation, daring to fail, etc.

How do you adapt the problem to the students’ educational levels and their learning preferences?
What methods for idea generation and concept development can you use?
How can play be included in idea generation? What techniques and exercises can be used, for example, to open a process, to listen to each other’s suggestions, to select ideas, to close a process?
How can iterative design processes be included in innovation modules?

Retrospective Reflections

After completion, students describe their work process and technological products using the correct terms and in relation to the underlying theories. This concerns what students have learned about technology and design processes.

How should students present their digital products and the chosen technical solutions?
What perspectives does the product have, for example, in a societal context? What other problems can the product solve?
What could the students have done differently in the design process with their current knowledge?
What types of feedback could be valuable to the students? For example, summative feedback (assessment of an existing product), formative evaluation (guidance concerning future products), portfolio (ongoing products and reflections).

DIGITAL LITERACY

Digital Empowerment

Involves a critical, reflective, and constructive approach to digital technologies and automation, including gaining an understanding of security, ethics, and consequences.

Ethics and Society

Concerns ethical issues and dilemmas in the use and development of technology, for example, to support climate, economy, security, combat crime, etc.

Who benefits from the technologies, and what needs are we fulfilling?
What are the connections between analog and digital solutions?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of the chosen technologies?
What role does the given technology play in society?
Why should we work with technology in this teaching module?

Individual Relevance

Involves relating technologies to their significance for individual students, for example, in their leisure time and daily life, their future aspirations, their learning preferences, etc.

What personal experiences do students already have with using the technologies?
What relevance does the given technology have for society and for the students themselves?
How does the students’ perspective influence their choice of design cases? For example, an interest in gaming might lead to the design of a shooting game, while an interest in climate might lead to the design of a game that addresses pollution.

Critical Thinking

Involves reflecting on the advantages, disadvantages, and consequences of technologies and their use, including cybersecurity, personal data protection, source criticism, etc.

How do you choose credible sources?
What are the written and unwritten rules on social media?
How do you promote the formation of attitudes and opinions among students and encourage them to take a critical stance?

Technological Actionability

Involves the ability to express oneself and master tools to articulate computational thinking in a digital artifact, selecting and developing digital resources.

Communities of Practice

The digital competence and skill in applying it in social professional contexts, even when the practice occurs in actions that are not expressed in words.

How should students collaborate on digital literacy?
How are students dependent on each other in their collaboration?
How does collaboration take place in teams/for the individual/with a manager or coordinator?
Are role models, senior students, and business involved as relevant stakeholders?

Computational Thinking

Involves promoting students’ abilities to apply knowledge about networks, algorithms, programming, logical thinking, abstraction, and pattern recognition. Data modeling, testing, and trialing.

How to work on debugging codes or a system? How can you introduce an error (for which you have the solution)?
How do you enhance students’ understanding of how the code was executed in sequence?
How do students work with coding and programming: for example, loops, conditions, variables, and other programming concepts?
How do students master programs for digital production, such as of videos, wireframes, digital prototypes of apps?

SUSTAINABILITY

In general

Do you apply and create relevant teaching materials about sustainability and ethics that include economic, environmental, and social aspects, so students understand what sustainability is and why it is important?
How can you make students become aware of sustainability in the development process and the digital product?

Environment and ´digitainability´

(How) can the digital product benefit the environment? Such as offer energy-saving alternatives to ordinary solutions, make energy consumption transparent, nudge energy-saving behavior, or others.
How do you ensure that the technology you use in teaching does not contribute to e-waste? What are your strategies for responsible disposal?
Do your students practice troubleshooting and repairing technologies instead of throwing them away when they don’t work?

Economy and ressources

Can you reuse others’ teaching design and materials?
Can you reuse already available technology in the teaching process? How can you and your students reuse technology, both hardware and software, so resources are not wasted?
Can you adapt, improve, or be inspired by others’ materials to fit your students?
Do you and your students program software that works across different operating systems to ensure broad accessibility?
Do you get your students to reflect on the fact that the use of digital technology is resource-intensive?
How do your students document their digital productions so others can reuse them? Examples: Explicit notes between code lines, role of files, general information about the digital product. Videos can be used for this purpose, too. Consider private or public sharing.
How do you strengthen interdisciplinary collaboration to create sustainable solutions?
How can you and your students learn from others’ experiences regarding the choice of technology and digital productions?

Psycho-social well-being

How can your students provide constructive feedback, collaborate, and share ideas with each others to strengthen social interaction and promote psycho-social well-being?
Are you and your students aware of accessability to the digital product for target groups with special needs?