Lego Mindstorms Robotics in a (Very) Small Liberal Arts College

This paper describes the use of Lego Mindstorms Robotics Innovation Systems ("Mindstorms kits") at Hiram College. Hiram College is a small residential liberal arts college with approximately 900 traditional undergraduate students and no graduate students. I have used the robots in a course called the First Year Colloquium, which is a freshman non-majors course. I hope to use the robots in a 3-week intensive special topics course and in my Artificial Intelligence course, but have not yet done so. In this paper, I describe two instances of the first year colloquium course as well as the constraints that are inherent in the small liberal arts college setting.