Stories from a Local Robotics Competition: Communicating and Collaborating Across Barriers
Last week, I had the opportunity to attend a VEX IQ Robotics Competition (VIQRC) for the game Rapid Relay. This competition in southwestern Pennsylvania was full of enthusiastic and engaged students, trying their best to earn points, learn from one another, and have fun!
VIQRC is rooted in the idea of camaraderie, communication, and collaboration. When teams are partnered with one another to earn a high score, students are incentivized to work together to determine how they can best contribute to their shared goal. This competition was a shining example of how students with diverse backgrounds, needs, and experience levels worked together to create memorable learning moments. In just a few hours, I saw:
- Deaf students teach hearing students the sign language alphabet
- Students adapt their communication styles to improve their partnerships
- Veteran teams learn to be more confident in their abilities and robotics knowledge
- Brand new teams learn to ask questions and persevere through frustration
- Students learn from their own mistakes and make plans for future competitions
- And so much more!
Collaborating across language barriers
At this event, teams from the local School for the Deaf competed. There were American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters at the competition to help the teams and coaches communicate with others throughout the day. However, one of my favorite moments of the day was watching the deaf students work with their hearing alliance members as they prepared for a match. Both the hearing and deaf students were huddled together around their robots. Everyone was eager to talk to one another, but with only one interpreter on hand, the conversation took more time than the teams desired. The deaf students began teaching the ASL alphabet to the hearing students, in order to discuss strategy and game plans more efficiently and directly.
Each of the hearing students was quick to try this new language, helping them grow as alliance partners and as communicators. Through rough sketches, spelling with ASL, and the interpreter, these two teams grew stronger together, and ultimately created a unified, successful strategy for the match.
Communicating with confidence
With over twenty teams competing, there was a range of experience within the competition. Some teams had been competing for years, while others were at their first ever robotics competition. While walking around the pits, I watched one new team start to get frustrated with their robot. They could not remember how to pair their Controller, or how to fix their Drive Program so the Controller worked as intended. These students, an elementary school team, were quick to ask those around them for help. One of the teams they asked was a middle school team with years of competition experience. This middle school team had been fairly quiet and kept to themselves throughout the event, but were quick to come help when asked.
The older students patiently talked through the problem with the younger team and taught them how to fix their Controller problems. As the interaction progressed, I saw the middle school student become more confident in themselves. They were talking about a topic they knew inside and out, giving them the opportunity to practice communication skills with other teams, and build their confidence. At the same time, the elementary students were learning and growing in their robotics knowledge. The constant sharing between teams was not specific to experience or age levels – every student had the opportunity to learn from one another.
Learning from experience
As I walked around and talked with teams during the competition, I made sure to ask the same two questions each time:
- What are you most proud of about your robot or your code?
- What have you learned so far today from other teams, or from competing?
In response to the first question, I heard overwhelmingly positive stories about how students worked and collaborated within their teams to build a new mechanism, alter their strategy, or even code their robot. One team shared with me that they were most proud of their robot because they knew where each idea for the design came from and that everyone on their team contributed. This positivity and support within the teams was pervasive throughout the event, and continues to be my favorite part of talking with students. Competitions are a place for them to showcase their learning, whether that be coding, engineering, collaborating, or persevering.
When faced with the second question, teams’ answers varied wildly from specific mechanisms they wanted to incorporate in the robot, new strategies for the next competition, and even one honest young team who told me: “We learned how not to build a robot.”
When I asked for more information, she explained that they knew their robot was probably going to fall apart when they started matches, but that she and her teammates wanted to come anyway so they could learn from other kids. And they did! Their robot, while simplistic, was enough to get them the experience of competing and working with other young roboticists from all around the area, and they ended the competition with sketches of things they wanted to try before the next event.
These stories show just a fraction of the social emotional learning, the robotics knowledge, and the fun that students from all backgrounds experienced this past weekend. If you have been hesitant to start a team at your school or in your local community, I implore you to just try. Start talking to your students who might be interested now and get started!