CD-ROM Tutorial for Elementary School Students Under Development

CPES is committed to developing pre-college programs in partnership with elementary and middle school stduents and teachers. In Fall 2001, CPES received a supplemental grant from the National Science Foundation for a project entitled "Partnerships in Engineering: A Robotics Challenge Program for Southwestern Virginia." This project is based on the FIRST LEGO Legue (FLL) Robotics Challenge Program and is intended to engage pre-college students in an ongoing project related to power controls and design. This project was designed to increase FLL participation in rural communities in Southwestern Virginia that have historically lacked the resources and research infrastructure to foster the development of such a program.
The CPES initiative provides participating teachers and students with on-site demonstrations, workshops and mentorship by engineering undergraduate and graduate students. In 2005, the CPES team is completing development of five computer-based tutorials for use in the classroom. Each module cponsists of a beginner, or "Basic" cluster and an "Advanced" cluster. Each tutorial unit consists of a home page, an introduction, linked lessons, and a glossary targeting the second grade reading level. The modules -- Problem Solving, Gears, Power, Sensors and Programming -- will be accessible via the CPES website. In order to facilitate the integration of robotics in to the classroom, the FLL contents are being aligned with the Virginia Standards of Learning.