Inspiring rural and tribal students through robotics championships and self-directed learning
Rural Premier League (RPL) is an innovative robotics championship designed specifically for rural and tribal students. Modeled after the Indian Premier League (IPL), RPL brings together teams from villages across North Gujarat to compete in robotics challenges while exploring self-learning and innovation.
Season 1 of RPL focused on Robotics, exploring self-learning capabilities in rural and tribal students while creating teams of like-minded people across all age groups for exploring innovation.
RPL engages multiple stakeholders across age groups
Students of Grade 6 to Grade 10, school dropouts, or illiterate students in the age group of less than 15 years.
Students, dropouts, or illiterate individuals aged less than 25 years who provide technical guidance and team building support.
All aged group village people, mainly students and youth who benefit from the innovation ecosystem created by RPL.
Season 1 of RPL focused on Robotics, exploring self-learning capabilities in rural and tribal students. The program aimed to create teams of like-minded people across all age groups to explore innovation and technical skills. It demonstrated that with proper guidance and resources, rural students can excel in advanced technology fields.
RPL 2019 began on 15th April 2019 and concluded on 10th December 2019, spanning approximately 8 months of intensive engagement with 60 village teams.
How RPL Season 1 was executed across 60 villages
Our team members visited 90 villages to create awareness for RPL 2019. We met with village heads (Sarpanch), students, teachers, and community members to form teams according to specific norms:
Teams were provided with all necessary kits and online assistance. The Village Sarpanch was involved in all modalities and served as the mentor of each team. Through consistent efforts, we successfully formed 60 teams as planned. Teams traveled to Idar for RPL events (average distance of 20 kms), with transportation being their only expense.
All 60 teams were divided into six zones based on their geographical location. Teams received basic robotics kits and guidance on building robots. Our organizing team visited villages one week before the zonal rounds to provide ideas about challenges and boost confidence.
RoboRace and MazeHunter - Testing skills, common sense, and technical aspects of robots.
Design Your Dreams - Testing model design skills and creativity.
Teams were assessed on punctuality, team outlook, and the number of people they taught in their village.
After 3 days of zonal tournaments, 12 teams were selected for the RPL finals. Finalists received add-on kits to upgrade their basic robots and were given problem statements via WhatsApp groups to prepare for the finals, which were held just one week after the zonal rounds.
The final 12 teams participated in the championships with real passion, facing five challenges on the same day, back-to-back:
Technical challenge testing robot navigation and obstacle avoidance skills.
Robot wrestling competition demonstrating strength and control mechanisms.
Precision and accuracy challenge inspired by cricket.
Design thinking challenge assessing creativity and innovation.
Q&A session with a jury of innovators about their RPL journey, testing communication and reflection skills.
The championship rounds showcased tremendous innovation, skills, and adaptability among finalists. After fierce competition, Oda Dragons (Oda village team with all government school students) emerged as the RPL 2019 Champions!
During the finals, many other students from various schools and villages demonstrated their innovations to visitors. A local innovator showcased a paramotor (motorized paraglider), which attracted significant attention. A special Robo Carnival was also organized for young kids to give them fun exposure to the world of robotics.
Prizes for zonal and championship rounds were given in the form of Technical Kits at three different levels:
Basic microcontroller kits for beginners to continue their robotics journey.
Advanced kits with various sensors and communication modules for intermediate learners.
Comprehensive kits for advanced projects and real-world applications.
All winners and other teams were given the opportunity to attend weekend workshops on the three kit levels and their applications. All active WhatsApp accounts of RPL teams and a common WhatsApp group of "CaptionNCoach" remain engaged, with organizers continuing to help them learn new things and stay informed about other contests across the state and nation.
Measuring success across students, coaches, and the ecosystem
360 students directly involved and over 3,000 students indirectly benefited from RPL 2019 for Robotics.
Total reach: over 5,000 students, parents, teachers, and community members.
80% of teams were able to make their robot without direct intervention from organizers. The remaining 20% needed some support to understand and solve problems at certain stages.
60-70% of teams were able to engage each team member productively, demonstrating quality teamwork in the Elevator Pitch Q&A sessions with experts.
Most teams learned from their mistakes quickly, learned from other teams, and were highly adaptive to situations and challenges.
Most teams' involvement in RPL was profound, making the competition highly competitive and demonstrating genuine passion for learning and innovation.
More than 50% of coaches provided the extra edge that 11-15 year old teams needed when facing technical problems. Their role in team building was also notable, especially in the championship finals. Coaches brought confidence, planning, and technical know-how to the teams.
While we were not able to fully assess or involve Sarpanch and other fellow villagers in RPL 2019, we recognize their importance and are exploring ways to have their active involvement in future seasons.
For future RPLs, we expect very good responses and support from 70-80% of villages. We need to find ways to keep contact alive with smaller interventions, where teams can find more challenges to work on together.
There is good possibility to create a village-level sustainable ecosystem to nurture the innovation spirit in young students. If a common platform of like-minded school children, college students, technicians, fabricators, Sarpanch, and financial supporters is established in a village, there is great potential for grass-root innovation from the village itself, solving their own problems in their own way and wisdom.
On the Championship final day, students were inspired when Dr. Navin Sheth, Vice Chancellor of Gujarat Technological University (GTU), acknowledged that their level of participation was not less than degree engineering students. GTU covers all degree, diploma engineering colleges, MBA, MCA, and Pharmacy colleges of Gujarat.
RPL can be replicated by other organizations or academic institutions. However, before implementation to such a high number of villages, one needs to create rapport with villages over a period of 2 to 3 years.
We would like to share all our communication, norms, formats, sources for things, etc., if someone would like to replicate it. Some details are already made available on our website: http://rpl.uniqyou.org/
It also requires other collaborators to effectively execute RPL. A dedicated team of enthusiastic young people for at least four months is essential for successful intervention.
We planned to scale up with Season 2 in 2020 with some other interventions like:
Scaling up would be very challenging and would require CSR finance support and student internships from engineering colleges/polytechnics.
Help us bring innovation and self-learning opportunities to more rural and tribal students. Partner with us for Season 2 or replicate RPL in your region.