Photo from Texas Tech University’s Whitacre College of Engineering website.
Texas Tech is one of the many universities involved in the state’s initiative to get elementary, middle, and high school students engaged and involved in STEM. STEM is an acronym for science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
According to the Texas STEM, or T-STEM, Coalition website, many schools work to change teaching and learning methods, increase achievement in STEM education, and ensure all students are successful in college and in life. Lubbock — as well as Austin, College Station, Dallas, San Antonio, and other cities in Texas — has its own T-STEM centers.
One of the ways instructors can apply the STEM disciplines in classrooms from kindergarten through 12th grade is through robotics competitions. According to Tech’s T-STEM Center website, robotics activities, including competitions, give students the opportunity to incorporate lessons from STEM to construct their own robots.
Tanja Karp, associate professor in the electrical and computer engineering department at Tech, said her involvement with T-STEM dates back to 2005 and explained the process instructors have to go through.
“The idea was we need more students in electrical engineering and computer sciences,” Karp said, “and you could write a proposal and have a project that you say ‘this is what I like to do’ in order to attract students into the STEM disciplines or well, at the time, engineering.”
Karp said she and her colleague, Richard Gale, Ph.D., a professor and associate chair of the department’s graduate studies, wrote a proposal suggesting a pipeline of robotics activities beginning at elementary schools. Karp works with elementary- and middle school-aged students, and Gale works with older students in middle school and high school.
Karp said she likes the students to get excited about STEM early on.
“I like them to have some idea of what engineering is,” Karp said. “So, I send students from my service learning class out to the schools, engineering students, such that the participants really see like what they do is engineering on a small scale.”
When these students get older, she said, they need a good grip on STEM foundations.
“They shouldn’t neglect their math classes,” Karp said. “They shouldn’t neglect their science classes, and whether they like it or not, they need to be good writers, too.”
Gale said these robotics competitions are like athletic events, with a lot of excitement. The robots play with different materials, such as frisbees and yoga balls.
Different robot competitions like BEST and FIRST have different competition structures and components, Gale said. FIRST, or FIRST Robotics Competition, stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. BEST, BEST Robotics Inc., stands for Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology.
“So BEST,” Gale said, “the game this year was the engineering challenges associated with transporting wind turbine components around the West Texas landscape and building, you know, wind turbines and things like that.”
Gale said these robot competitions not only emphasize technical skills but also interpersonal skills like teamwork.
Engineering is like an invisible workforce that makes tasks possible, Karp said.
“It’s all the stuff they take for granted,” Karp said, “you switch the light on, the vacuum cleaner works, the car drives you to school.”
Photo by Texas Tech University’s Whitacre College of Engineering website
Karp said she wants the kids who participate in these competitions to realize what the difficulties are in engineering.
- “That’s what I want them to realize,” Karp said, “that they have what type of challenges that are involved in engineering: design something that improves life quality with limited resources and with a deadline when it needs to work.”
In addition to learning about the STEM field, Karp said students improve their critical thinking and teamwork skills.
“If you go and ask,” Karp said, “problem-solving, critical thinking, and teamwork, those are kind of like the skills that teachers work with the students pointed out those are the most, very useful life skills regardless of whether you go into STEM or not. There are benefits in participating beyond kind of the narrow STEM field and interest in STEM. So, even if they don’t do STEM, they still have something they learned that they can benefit from.”
Gale said students also learn about marketing, financial components and presenting skills.
“So,” Gale said, “both competitions emphasize the whole package that is not just the construction of the robot and how well it competes, but also how the team works following the engineering design process and then communications and team behaviors, things like that.”
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