Abstract:
Participant retention in online learning has often been discussed as a challenge in educational research. During 2020-2021, the existing challenges were burdened by the covid-19 pandemic. This study explores certain engagement techniques with participants through an online project-based learning mode provided as a part of a nationwide robotics competition during the pandemic. 54 teams (176 participants) from 42 institutions participated in the competition to build a sophisticated field programmable gate array (fpga) architecture. The study aims to understand participant engagement, the effect due to covid-19 pandemic and lockdown, personal development due to competition, and the effect of scaffoldings and guided efforts. Despite the challenges due to the pandemic, additional scaffolding and guided efforts lead to approximately 24% of teams successfully building the architecture. This is similar to an average of 26% in pre-pandemic editions of the competition without these additional scaffolds. These efforts and mode of learning are thus found to successfully engage participants during pandemic. © isls.