“Robotics is the silver bullet for education”

MULTI-FACETED: From designing the curriculum with head judge Robert Ford to scheduling all the teacher training sessions, Dr Theodore Chiasson’s role in putting together the massive Olympiad is multi-faceted.

By Anand Holla

In the week leading to the 2014 Qatar National Robot Olympiad showdown, Dr Theodore Chiasson appears as unperturbed as he perhaps would the week after.

The man, who organises the grand annual championship of ingenious gadgetry, sits at his office in the College of North Atlantic-Qatar (CNA-Q) and speaks with poise as measured as a machine’s moves.

“Robotics invokes a passion for learning that I haven’t seen anything else do,” Chiasson says, “It seems like the silver bullet. While it’s been said for 50 years that there’s no silver bullet for education, I believe robotics is a silver bullet for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects.”

“If a student gets really excited about robotics,” he continues, “it could change the whole path of his or her career and life. A lot of times students don’t choose science because they think it’s difficult and boring. But robotics shows that it’s difficult and fun, which is very different.”

The Dean of Information Technology at the CNA-Q certainly knows how it all flows. As the weekend saw Qatar’s biggest ever Robot Olympiad bustling with more than a whopping 300 teams at Aspire Zone, from elementary, middle and senior schools in Qatar across seven categories, it was clear that the event will only grow in the years to come.

Four years ago though, few could have predicted this staggering growth curve. It all started in 2009 for Chiasson when he served as a judge at that year’s Qatar National Robot Olympiad (QNRO).

“The following year, no competition was held. So I approached the World Robot Olympiad (WRO). That’s because I saw, from the projects presented at the 2009 Olympiad, that it was a great competition for encouraging students to start studying science,” he says.

In 2011, Chiasson became Qatar’s representative for the WRO and CNA-Q hosted the competition on its campus with 69 teams and just one category (Open). The following year, Maersk Oil Qatar’s decision to fund the initiative as part of their corporate social responsibility plan, injected the event with a newfound vigour. From expansion in training for teachers to expansion in the competition categories, the Olympiad had just gotten bigger, better, stronger.

“That year, we held a regional event called the WRO Arabia, which had 108 teams that flew in from all over the Middle East and even Africa. That year’s QNRO saw 112 teams,” Chiasson says. As the programme drew strength from the Supreme Education Council’s endorsement and Qatar Petroleum, too, signing on, more independent schools lined up for participation.

The QNRO is essentially the culmination of the year-long school robotics programme, GO ROBOT, which seeks to boost students’ interest in STEM subjects. This year, more teachers trained in robotics and more robotics kit and games tables were donated to schools — all courtesy sponsors — than ever before.  

“But we started off really small in 2011, with just 69 teams and 25 or 30 coaches involved. We were able to offer the teachers very brief training of five hours. We now offer 30 hours of instruction,” Chiasson points out, “This year, 500 teachers signed up for the training and 400 of them attended some of it, while more than 150 attended all 30 hours. That sure is a big contrast to 2011.”

The teachers’ training is split over 10 three-hour lessons. “In the first lesson, they uncover a brand new kit, build the robot as per the manual, learn the bare basics of programming,” Chiasson explains. “What follows are a series of programming lessons, done in a visual programming language that comes with the robotics kit.”

The choice of equipment for showcasing this automated wizardry is Lego Mindstorms, a full-fledged robotics kit. Chiasson says, “Lego Mindstorms are ideal because all of their parts are identical in all the kits. They have extreme tolerance levels in their construction because they are made from Lego bricks — one of the most precise toys on the planet, if not the most precise.”

“The design possibilities, with just a few bricks, are limitless,” Chiasson continues, “So when you have a whole kit with an expansion kit, which together is more than 1000 pieces, you can create an extraordinary number of different designs.” In the mid-Nineties, when the first version of Lego Mindstorms hit the market, Chiasson, who was doing his PhD in Computer Science in Nova Scotia, Canada, bought a kit so he could play with his five-year-old son. “The programming language interested me the most then. It was designed to look and act like Lego blocks,” he says.

From designing the curriculum with head judge Robert Ford — which they teach to their own staff of around 15 instructors — to scheduling all the teacher training sessions, Chiasson’s role in putting together this massive Olympiad is multi-faceted. “We will be hosting the world finals of this competition next November, which will see 400 teams from more than 50 countries,” he says.

The major addition to this year’s Olympiad has been the third category (Open and Regular being the other two) of GEN II Football, featuring 20 teams. “On a large football game table, two robots from each team fight it out,” Chiasson elaborates, “They are equipped with special sensors — an infra-red secret sensor that can detect the ball which emits an infra-red signal, and a compass sensor which helps the robots figure which way they are aiming their kicks.”

Predictably, it’s a pain in the neck for the kids to push their robots into playing some quality football, which here means two 10-minute halves. “It’s really difficult because the robots have very limited sensors to facilitate precise movement,” he says.

The referee’s role is significant, too, as there are bound to be a lot of interventions. Chiasson explains, “For instance, every time the ball touches the side of the playing field, it has to be moved to a neutral area. If a robot is damaged, it gets a 30-second penalty and is removed from play.”

The technically better robot is not guaranteed to excel either. “In robotics, the environment is not as kind to you as you’d like,” Chiasson reasons, “You can program your robot such that it works perfectly, but then you encounter your opponent’s robot and things don’t go so well. A real simple robot might end up doing really well, whereas a complicated robot might just trip itself up. It’s impossible to predict.”

What is much easier to predict is the sway of robotics in fuelling students’ fascination for STEM. “Robotics is wonderful in instilling an interest and excitement about science which you don’t necessarily get from a teacher’s lecture,” Chiasson says, “Research has shown that children that get involved with robotics are more likely to pursue STEM courses and careers. Research also shows an increase, especially for girls’ participation in engineering fields if they are introduced to robotics.”

Chiasson then puts this in better perspective. “I have found that when you build a robot yourself and you want it to do something new, you have to learn more maths, more science or more physics, to be able to do that. The motivation for the learning is then within the student, which makes for a complete paradigm shift in terms of the learning environment,” he points out.

Even the most formidable challenge posed by touch-screen technology in the way of the youth’s pre-occupation with smartphones and tablets doesn’t seem to interfere with developing a passion for robotics.

“As robotics is technology, there’s an attraction there, too. The children are not used to playing with technology that interacts with the environment. Robotics, therefore, draws them away from the touch-screens. The children now interact with the robot in the environment as opposed to just in their minds. So robotics brings imagination to life in some ways,” Chiasson says.

The natural ability of children to play and try different things helps them learn robotics faster than most of their teachers, Chiasson feels. “If I come across a challenge, I would put it to the kids and let them solve it. That’s because they would come up with ideas I would have never thought of. My mind is closed from all the things I have learned. Theirs are still wide open,” he says.

The satisfaction of creating your own robot, too, is unmatchable to say, posting a new top score on Subway Surfers. Chiasson refers to a video clip of the 2012 Olympiad on their website: “There’s this young girl who’s standing next to her robot and she says — We built the robot and we programmed the robot.”

And that, Chiasson believes, sums up everything. “She owns it,” he says, “She learnt how to do it and she’s proud of her accomplishment. She didn’t win the competition and she didn’t have to. She was so happy to be participating and she could show that she could build and programme a robot that could do whatever she wanted it to do. So it’s all about getting children to embrace STEM, and to make them feel proud of what they can do with it.”