The Impact Study of RoboCupJunior – Educational Robotics Competition – 23 Years Later

The paper reports a case study investigating the impact that participation in RoboCupJunior (RCJ) competitions had on the participating students including their educational choices, career decisions, and what impacts they think the competition had years after their participation. RoboCupJunior is an educational robotics competition promoting global collaboration among participating students. RCJ has demonstrated the ability to engage students in robotics and offers a unique learning opportunity for STEM, CS, AI, and robotics education and engaged learning. Since 2000 when the first RCJ event was held in Melbourne, Australia, there are 600–1,000+ students participated in the annual RCJ competition each year. A lot more teams and students participate in each region (country) since all Junior teams go through the regional (national) selection events before joining the annual event. Currently, there are over 40 regions (countries) holding Junior activities and the interest is growing every year. We have witnessed the impact it has on the Junior teams for many years. However, what proves the impact of RCJ as of today is anecdotal accounts mainly from the observations by RCJ organizers, team mentors and teachers, and the stories shared by RCJ participants. The case study investigates and reports the longitudinal impacts of RCJ participation on the team members.