DOI
https://doi.org/10.1002/cae.22321

Summary
The article considers computational thinking and programming educations at the early age. The authors present the research on 2-week-long summer camp called Young Engineer’s Workshop (YEW) which aims to facilitate students’ interest in robotics and STEAM disciplines. The research questions focus on students’ previous experiences in robotics, their computational thinking skills, reflection on YEW activities and outcomes. The research methodology is presented by the description of participants, workshop program and activities, evaluation procedure. Then the findings were presented to answer the research questions. The quantitative analysis results were combined with the results obtained from qualitative data, such as project participants’ diaries. Overall, the suggested workshop approach resulted in the increased students’ interest in programming, robotics, and other STEAM disciplines and positive evaluation of workshop activities. The authors also discuss the study limitations, such as small number of participants and failing to indicate development of creativity, team work skills.

Relevance for Complex Systems Knowledge
The authors present a research on activities in a two-week summer camp on robotics programming. Students of middle and high school participated in this research. They were introduced to various topics in robotics programming, such as using and controlling sensors, developing algorithms and others. As a robotics project, students had to build a robotic scheme based on real-life situations. The examples of the constructed robotic systems were smart home automation, fire detection automation, etc. These systems combined knowledge in robotics programming, physics, biology, artificial intelligence and other subjects. Despite the improved knowledge in robotics programming, students were able to develop their collaborative skills by working in groups and presentation skills by demonstrating their projects and experience in the exhibition area on the last day. As a conclusion, the authors state that this summer camp resulted in significant improvement of students’ computational thinking abilities. Moreover, the students declared their enjoyment to participate in the suggested activities and learn robotics programming in the proposed way.

Point of Strength
The point of strength of this article is a described daily curriculum of two-week summer camp of robotics programming for youngsters. The authors state that such summer camps increase students’ interest in programming and robotics and self-confidence in project development.