Delivering software engineering education through LEGO robotics

The number of software engineering jobs is expected to grow faster than all other jobs over the next decade. STEM education is an important initiative to encourage young students to develop the skills they require to succeed in these positions. The First Lego League sponsors annual tournaments in which students must build and program a robot to accomplish various tasks in order to score points. Previously, the students had not used any process or documentation when developing the programs to run on the robot. This competition provides an opportunity to instruct the students in the benefits of using a formalized process that is essential in many software engineering projects commonly encountered in industry.