Learning by competing and competing by learning: Experience from the e-Yantra Robotics Competition

e-Yantra Robotics Competition (eYRC) is an initiative of the e-Yantra project to bring the experience of Project Based Learning to engineering students by using a competition to deliver hands-on training on-line. Five hundred students forming 131 teams were selected from across India to participate in the pilot run of the competition, eYRC-2012 that consists of a set of tasks through which students are evaluated. We map the tasks such as theme analysis, implementation analysis, and video demonstration to outcomes such as acquiring basic knowledge, application of knowledge, and critical analysis. Results show that over 95% of the teams participated imbibed basic knowledge of embedded systems and robotics, 60% of the teams applied their knowledge to develop a solution to a given problem, while over 30% of the teams could critically analyze the problem and come up with an effective solution. These results are confirmed by similar effectiveness studies of the eYRC-2013 competition. This competition was conducted completely on-line and students did not incur any costs, ingredients essential for ensuring scalability and inclusiveness of the project. Students transfer the Robotic kits to their respective colleges at the end of the competition enabling nurturing of future generations of students at the colleges.