Design and Analysis of a Robotics Day Event to Encourage the Uptake of a Career in STEM Fields to Pre-GCSE Students

This paper investigates a single day event intended to encourage school students to take up STEM subjects from an early age, in order to access STEM fields later in their educational cycle and thus careers. The event was hosted at Queen's University Belfast in conjunction with the QUB iAMS group and the IEEE. Teaching theories such as Bloom's Taxonomy and constructivism, including social constructivism and constructionism, were used to optimize student learning. The students were given a number of tasks based on these theories and asked to rate them at the end. There was an overwhelmingly positive response from most students, both observed and in ratings. For each activity, the more learning theories applied, the better it was rated. Based on the results, the day was branded a success and will no doubt have a positive effect on encouraging pre-GCSE students to take up STEM subjects and fields.