Abstract:

This paper presents a road map for designing a robot competition to develop and improve students’ STEM skills. A robot competition is proposed and designed to measure the students’ ability to innovate, solve problems, and think critically. In other words, students need to use their STEM skills to compete by designing robots within specific criteria that are able to accomplish given tasks. Throughout the competition, points can be earned by each team for each task completed, in addition to earning points for robot design and its response. Task completion represents the actual performance of the robots designed to accomplish a certain task. In order to ensure proper robot designs, the layout of the robot competition track is provided to all teams in advance. Mechanical design, electrical circuitry design (if not a ready-to-use robot kit), programming, robot response, power consumption, and aesthetics are all factors in robot design scoring.

The track for the proposed robot competition was designed with STEM program criteria in mind where the focus was to test how the team performance is measured by a set of criteria. The first criterion is the engineering design process used to integrate science, math, and technology. This criterion is measured through the robot design, which includes mechanical and electrical circuitry design, programming, robot response, power consumption, and appearance. The second criterion is problem solving and the students’ ability to develop a functioning prototype. Students should focus on real-world problems or engineering challenges. The completion of given tasks is itself a direct measure of this criteria. These two criteria are interconnected and they measure students' performance by giving an indication of how good the proposed prototype design is. Students are required to explain their design choices to the judges in order to earn points for their robot design, so the first criterion is met and measured. Teachers encourage inquiry-based and student-centered learning that include hands-on investigation. By providing the students with the track design and task requirements, they can design and build the robot on their own with the supervision of their instructors. Overall, competition tracks are designed and built to test students' STEM skills and their ability to apply these skills in solving engineering problems and hence, innovate and critically think. This certainly provides them with the opportunity to better understand their own strengths and weaknesses.

Keywords:

STEM Skills, Robot Competition Design, Innovation, Problem Solving, Critical Thinking.