Universities using Vex, Lego, Others

[Nate Edwards]

I am looking for a list of universities using Vex, Lego mindstorms, or other educational robots in their Engineering or Computer Science programs?

If your college uses one of these or you know of where to find more information about this please respond.

Thanks
Nate Edwards
Oregon State University

[Timothy D. Ginn]

Did you want to find out about Universities that use Lego in outreach programs for elementary/high school students when that outreach is being done by the Computing department/faculty who work in more than one department including the Computing department, too?

If so, the School of Computing (http://www.cs.queensu.ca/) at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada (http://www.queensu.ca/)

I'm not sure if other educational robots are used elsewhere in the school, too. I know some student groups build their own robots for fun/education; but, I'm not sure if they're based around a kit or not.

[Nate Edwards]

I would like to know what colleges/universities use them both as an outreach tool and as a learning tool for freshman students... or the like.

Thanks

Nate
Did you want to find out about Universities that use Lego in outreach programs for elementary/high school students when that outreach is being done by the Computing department/faculty who work in more than one department including the Computing department, too?

If so, the School of Computing (http://www.cs.queensu.ca/) at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada (http://www.queensu.ca/)

I'm not sure if other educational robots are used elsewhere in the school, too. I know some student groups build their own robots for fun/education; but, I'm not sure if they're based around a kit or not.

[Tristan Lall]

The University of Waterloo uses them in the first year of the mechatronics engineering program. But truth be told, the projects that I've seen (coming out of the first-year MTE 100 class) were generally on the level of a mid-range FLL team. It's only speculation, but maybe if they'd spent less time trying to rigourously teach the programming, and more time on just playing with the Lego, they would have had better success as compared to the twelve-year-olds. (Granted, this project is but one of many academic demands that the 'trons have to deal with; so I could see it being less-than-top-priority.)

On the other hand, FIRST is very well known to the mechatronics faculty and students; maybe in time, some ex-FLL students will enrol, and do something a bit more impressive.

[Billfred]

USC has this program known as Carolina Master Scholars, a set of programs for academically-gifted students going into grades 6-12. The College of Engineering and Information Technology (man, that does NOT roll off the tongue) runs a one-week program using the Vex system, aimed at rising 9-12th-graders. It appears to be more mechanical-based than programming-based, although I know that USC has a few programming kits in there as well.

And there's a FIRST connection, natch; Dr. Roger Dougal has been working with the Palmetto Regional for as far back as I can remember, and I know that Donn Griffith (former FVC Director, 281er, 343er, and current USC COEIT Outreach honcho) has been working hard on the program as well. Hope somebody gets some good photos of this one; it should be interesting.

[Astronouth7303]

I'm not sure this counts, but WPI's Frontiers program's robotics class (ran by team 190) uses Vex.

[Ashley Weed]

Penn State has an intro level Aeronautical Engineering (I believe) course that uses Lego's.

If you feel like actually reading through all of the courses and what they use it can be found at soc.our.psu.edu

[artdutra04]

I'm not sure this counts, but WPI's Frontiers program's robotics class (ran by team 190) uses Vex.Worcester Polytechnic Institute is developing a full robotics curriculum. WPI does work closely with FIRST and Vex throughout the year, as they have their own Savage Soccer (http://users.wpi.edu/~savage/) Vex competition, as well as their FIRST Team (http://users.wpi.edu/~first/).

Here are some links to their robotics curriculum:
http://www.wpi.edu/Pubs/Catalogs/Ugrad/Current/robotdept.html
http://www.wpi.edu/Pubs/Catalogs/Ugrad/Current/Supp/robotics.html