Turning Competitions into Global Collaboration through Educational Robotics (original) (raw)

The chapter introduces a case of an educational robotics competition promoting global collaboration among participating students. Educational robotics is a learning tool that promotes the skills for collaboration and teamwork among students (Eguchi, 2007a, 2007b; Miller, Nourbakhsh, & Sigwart, 2008) through hands-on learning. When RoboCupJunior, an educational robotics competition, noticed some students becoming aggressively competitive at its annual World Championship, the organizers of the event decided to take measures to restructure its competition scheme in order to promote global collaboration among participating students. The chapter provides detailed information about the competition and its efforts to promote global collaboration among participating teams. In addition, although it is still in the early stages, the chapter shares anecdotal accounts of both participating students and organizers that confirm the positive impact the new approaches to competition has already had on encouraging collaboration among participating students.