**3.4 RVW pedagogical knowledge (PK) – perseverance rover**

This section suggests a pedagogical method (**Figure 1**) to make real world connections to robotics as students program their virtual robot. The Mars Perseverance Rover is a robot launched by NASA in July of 2020 and deployed on Mars on February 18, 2021 [31]. The Perseverance mission team engineered the rover to utilize a


### **Table 6.**

*Robot virtual worlds 12 graphical function categories.*

*Virtual Robotics in Hybrid Teaching and Learning DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.102038*

sophisticated collection of cameras and sensors to navigate the environment of Mars [32]. However, one simple calculation correlates directly to the students' virtual robot and circle geometry. The mission team calculated the distance that Perseverance travels in one rotation of the wheels, with no slippage on the rocky terrain of Mars, as 1.65 meters [33] using the same formula for the circumference of a circle demonstrated in Section 3.2 of this chapter. Educational philosopher John Dewey asserted that, "We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience" [34]. Take the time to have the students pause and reflect on the rover on Mars to appreciate the skills that they are learning as actionable in future STEM careers.

### **3.5 RVW pedagogical content knowledge (PCK)**

To achieve the intersections of pedagogy and content knowledge, teachers, coaches, and parents can reflect on the three types of problems delineated by Kirkley in the Principles for Teaching Problem Solving [35]. The students enacting virtual robotics will solve ill-structured problems without one solution. For every student in a class or on a team, they can develop a unique solution that solves the successful navigation of the virtual robot around the selected challenge. **Table 7** reveals three types of problems and the implications for instructing virtual robotics.


**Table 7.** *Three types of problems [35].*
