What do Engineering Students Gain from Robot Competitions?

Penn State Abington campus hosts several mobile robot design competitions each academic year to support project-based design activities in freshman and sophomore level engineering courses, and also to provide outreach to K-12 institutions in the Philadelphia, PA area.A student survey for the Abington undergraduate engineering majors was developed and implemented to investigate the outcomes of two robot competitions offered at Penn State Abington during the 2004-2006 time period.Students were asked questions concerning technical challenges, working in a team, time management, key lessons learned, and suggestions for improvements in the robot competition activity.Overall, the responses on the quality of the robot competition experience from the students' perspective were very good.One of the key results from the student survey was the positive feedback