Engineering education has become relevant for today’s coming generation and job market as technology is gaining prominence more with robotics, coding, and electronics. Nonetheless, quality STEM education with emphasis on engineering has remained a dream in many of the rural schools. Poor facilities, inadequate funding and equipment, and lack of equipment all pose huge challenges to the youth in the rural areas resulting to the poor study of subjects like robotics and engineering as compared to their counterparts in urban areas.
Low cost of implementation and accessibility have made open-source robotics kits ideal for introducing engineering concepts to students in rural school. These kits provide very practical learning experiences that help students to be creative, learn how to solve problems and technical skills as well. In this context, engineering and technology educators should embrace the incorporation of open-source robotics kits in the rural schools in the following ways.
1. Cost-Effective Access to Engineering Education
Perhaps, one of the biggest challenges to effective provision of quality engineering education in the rural areas is the high costs of equipments and learning materials. Most of the conventional robotic kits and STEM equipment are rather pricey, which poses a problem for schools with limited funds to spend on them. The robots which are built using open-source robotics kits are however way much cheaper. This is due to the fact that they are often cheap and can easily be adopted by schools so that students can have an opportunity of having practical lessons without having to dig deep into their pockets.
Educational platforms, for instance Arduino and Raspberry Pi are extensively used to enable students to assemble their robots using easily accessible and cheap components. These kits promote innovation and playtime or a trial for products offered by manufacturers, without necessarily paying for the entire product. Secondly, the kits can be fabricated using readily available cheap hardware and many of them are open source and can be obtained with free tutorials, instructions, tips and frequent asks online.
2. Encouraging Problem-Solving and Critical Thinking
Robotics education is essentially applied with intent to get students engage their mind and develop practical problem-solving skills. Such skills are best developed through open source robotics kits since the kits enable the students to construct, design and even code their robots from the ground up. While the purchased commercial kits bring ready-made robotic structures, the open source kits ask the students to design and build them, which helps inculcate an engineering attitude.
For instance, students may encounter problems like wiring of sensors, commanding of motors or solving of software problems that come with the course. In achieving these, they acquire fundamental problem solving skills that are relevant to most discipline from computer engineering to mechanical engineering. Even while using open-source, kits can be a bit challenging and require a significant degree of trial and error; this is good for the development of resilience in engineering students.
3. Bridging the Urban-Rural Divide in STEM Education
This has been an area that rural students and schools have lagged behind the urban students and schools in as far as STEM knowledge is concerned. Most of the rural school cannot afford to provide the technical support and professional knowledge in the area of engineering or even the infrastructure of enshrinement of engineering courses or extra curricular activities such as; robotics teams. Open source kits that include the hardware and other related components can easily be acquired from robots and make school with less capital base to implement this program find it easy to manoeuvre with such program.
Usually open-source kits facilitate independent study with help of teachers’ comments or video tutorials and forums. This means that with this type of teaching and learning approach, rural schools can integrate robotics into their teaching learning process without necessarily having to employ specialized STEM teachers or even expensive training sessions. Furthermore, social support available in online groups of the open-source platforms ensure that students in rural setting can work together and share their projects with students of similar cohort but in a different part of the world.
4. Promoting Technological Literacy in Underserved Communities
This way integrating open- source robotics into rural classroom aids in enhancing technological competencies which are relevant in the contemporary world. Thus, when the students are learning to build and program robots, they get the overreaching concept of technologies including programs, electronics, and mechanics. All these skills are relevant in many engineering and technology occupations including software developers as well as industrial technology.
In many rural areas, there could be very few options for employment than in farming or doing manual jobs; yet once students have had exposure to robotics and technology, they would consider going for higher education and would consider the possibility of working in STEM fields. Robotics can also be introduced at the lower classes to remove the technological barrier that every child may not have technologically inclined parent to teach him/her all about technology.
5. Encouraging Collaboration and Creativity
Robotics education involves participation, sharing and cooperation since learners most of the time develop, construct and program their robots in groups. This kind of setting improves the students’ interpersonal communication and makes them work in groups with an aim of solving problems. Open-source robotics kits support this type of teamwork by offering a framework within which students can lower the barriers to contributing and sharing their code, designs and solutions with like-minded students from their own schools or from all over the world.
Furthermore, it can be seen that the open-source kits promote creativity because the students are not confined within set models or Software. They are capable of altering and regulating their robots to alight with their own preferences, for instance, make a robot that follows a line, or avoids hindrances, or one that sorts objects for instance. This versatility helps the students to demonstrate their creativity as they are being taught some of the fundamental concepts in engineering.
Conclusion
The application of open-source robotics lesson kits can be an ideal solution to the problem of engineering education in rural schools since it is rather inexpensive, and at the same time, allows to implement hands-on activities that help students develop effective problem-solving skills, creativity and technological competencies. When used in schools located in rural areas, the schools can help eradicate the divide between rural and urban STEM learning and equip the students with the right tools they need in the world that is technologically driven. As a method of developing the ability of students in the future opening source robotics kits are very useful for the rural education system.
