STEM education in the classroom, introducing BotBall

Botball provides students inquiry-based experiences to build creativity, critical thinking, and teamwork. | Credit: KISS Institute for Practical Robotics

The story of Botball and the Junior Botball Challenge is defined by a shift in perspective: moving away from a model where adults lead the way, and instead placing the full weight of discovery on the students.

According to Steve Goodgame, executive director of the KISS Institute of Practical Robotics ( KIPR ), the program was born from the idea that the same rigor applied to university-level robotics education could be adapted for high schoolers, middle schoolers, and eventually elementary students.

Botball strictly adheres to the principle of student-led engineering. By providing a standardized kit, the competition ensures that success is determined by the logic of the code and the creativity of the design rather than a school’s budget.

Goodgame emphasized this core value of the program in a conversation with The Robot Report.

“Everybody in the world gets the same box of parts, so it’s a level playing field,” he said. “You can’t buy better parts, can’t make better parts. You have to use what’s in the box, and adults don’t touch the robots when they come to the competition—adults are out of the pits. It’s what the kids can do using the same materials.”

By removing the “mentorship model” during the heat of competition, students learn true accountability. They aren’t just building a robot; they are managing a project from inception to execution, said Goodgame.

While many elementary programs utilize simplified, block-based dragging and dropping, Botball challenges the notion that children can’t handle “real” code. The program introduces text-based languages such as C and Python at an early age, treating them with the same natural ease as learning to speak or write.

“We kicked around the idea: Could kids really do real programming right at an early age? And so we did a little pilot and found out, yeah, of course they can,” noted Goodgame. “So when they’re learning language anyway, it’s actually easier for them.”

The Junior Botball Challenge (JBC) shifts the focus from head-to-head competition to inquiry-driven problem solving. Instead of one student controlling one robot, JBC uses a specialized controller that allows up to five students to program and run different segments of code on a single robot simultaneously.

As the summer ends and the new school year begins, more information about the upcoming schedule for competition is on the KIPR website .