Learning programming is often associated with being difficult, tedious and frustrating. But it can be fun and enriching if delivered the right way. And it takes a forward thinking school to make this a reality.

SUTD is one of those institutions who value learning innovations greatly. In this collaborative project, SUTD came to us with an excellent project but it had some glaring problems. The physical wheeled-robot they used was positively received by students, but after a while hardware problems creeping in.

What began as a tool to increase learning efficiency quickly turned to teaching quagmire. Due to repeated usage, the robot started failing. Wheels not turning properly, connection dropped, sensors not registering and many other hardware issues. Debugging is no longer just about software. 50% of the time spent on debugging hardware. Clearly this is not ideal for a software-focus programming class.

So we proposed to remove the robot issue... by removing it completely. We created a digital twin of the robot complete with its own playground. This digital twin is then presented through a Mixed Reality headset.

The result is nothing but positive. Not only learning efficiency is improved, but motivation is also shooting up. After all, one of the most important part of learning is that students have positive outlook on the course in the first place.

Here's how the experiment went: