The State of Robotics Ethics Education: A WIP Site Analysis

Yifei Zhu and Ali Kerr and Juan Lucena and Tiera Tanksley and Katie Winkle and Tom Williams

Annual Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education: Work in Progress Papers

Robotics is a rapidly emerging field, yet robotics education remains relatively underexplored. As robots become increasingly integrated into communities, there is an urgent need to embed social justice principles into robotics education. To achieve this, it is critical to first understand the current state of robotics education, including student demographics, instructional practices, and existing approaches to social justice integration. This work-in-progress paper examines three case sites that represent diverse geographical contexts, student populations, and instructional approaches. Each site incorporates social justice principles into robotics to varying degrees and through different methods. This paper presents a step in site analysis that illuminates key dimensions of robotics education practice. Our findings provide a reference for researchers and educators seeking to integrate social justice into robotics education, and serve as the first step for planned subsequent refinement of our work on social justice-centered robotics curricula design.