Main Idea: Demonstrate how unequal resources lead to unequal results and the importance of sharing resources if possible.

For this activity, we split our students into smaller teams of 6-8. We then separated the teams into different rooms so that they couldn’t see what others teams were doing. Each team was given instructions for the same activity: make a sign to cheer on our team! However, each set of instructions was assigned a different “limitation”; for example, one team had instructions in Spanish, another was told that no one could talk, and another had no limitations at all. At the end, the teams presented their signs to the other teams. (At this point, no teams knew why some teams performed differently than others.) We finally revealed that each team had unique disadvantages and talked about the applications of this lesson both in robotics and in the world.

Main Idea: Demonstrate the differences between competition and collaboration.

We asked our students to each find a partner. For five minutes, we asked half of the pairs to arm wrestle by trying to beat their partner and asked the other pairs to arm wrestle by maximizing the collective points of both students. During the five minutes, the pairs trying to maximize their collective points mostly figured out that they could do so by flip-flopping their arms back and forth. At the end, we asked each pair to share how many points they earned and discussed how the difference in points could be attributed to competition versus collaboration.

Main Idea: Emphasize how diversity can mean different things to different groups of people.

For this activity, we split our students into smaller teams of 6-8. We then separated the teams into different rooms so that they couldn’t see what others teams were doing. Each team was given a poster and was given ten minutes to draw a picture of what diversity means to them. At the end, we asked every group to come together and share their drawing with the other groups.

Main Idea: Encourage discussion about how everyone is worthy of being valued and included.

For this activity, we distributed a playing card to each person within our team, instructing them to hold the card so that the value faced outwards on top of their head. We then told everyone to freely walk around and interact with each other based on the value of their card. For example, team members holding a “King” were treated as kings with compliments while those with lower value cards were ignored. At the end, everyone came together and shared how it felt to be valued based on an arbitrary card number and how it related to treating other teammates.