The NIS Robotics Club has just wrapped up a very successful season, reflecting not only impressive competitive achievements but also the power of design thinking, innovation, and student agency within the IB learning experience at NIS. Expanding from four to seven teams for the 2025–26 season, Secondary students designed, built, and coded their own custom robots to compete in Local, Regional, and National Championships across China. Through countless hours of collaboration and problem-solving during after-school club meetings, students applied Design skills and the IB Approaches to Learning – from creative thinking and communication to self-management and resilience.

A defining feature of robotics at NIS is the strong emphasis on Student Voice and Student Choice. Students take ownership over the entire design process – identifying problems, testing solutions, refining prototypes, and making critical decisions as teams. This mirrors the inquiry-driven philosophy of the IB Middle Years Programme, where learners are encouraged to pursue curiosity, think independently, and tackle complex challenges collaboratively. Robotics provides students with opportunities to engage in interdisciplinary learning, combining coding, engineering, mathematics, physics, communication, and design into meaningful real-world applications.

NIS fielded six of its seven teams at the Regional Finals at Wellington College in Shanghai, where four teams progressed through to the National Finals. Team 84236D had a particularly successful run, receiving the Judges Award for their performance, while Team 84236B posted an impressive score of 72 points in the Driver Skills Challenge. At the National Finals at Concordia in Shanghai, Team 84236B continued to impress judges with their innovative engineering solutions, earning the Innovate Award for their response to the “PushBack” VEX Robotics challenge.

The highlight of the season came when Team 84236D earned a place at the VEX Robotics World Championships by winning the online China Cultural Award with their construction of a robotic Bixie. Travelling to St. Louis, Missouri, the team competed against 850 teams from around the world. During the event, the six students collaborated and trained with teams from Macau, Thailand, and Vietnam, refining both their technical and teamwork skills in a truly international environment that reflected the spirit of international mindedness at NIS. Over five days of competition, the team won four of their twelve matches, proving they could compete with some of the best robotics teams in the world. Their coach, NIS Design Teacher Mr. Ken Brady, shared how proud he was of the students’ resilience and determination throughout the competition, noting that the experience helped students realise “that they can compete against the best in the world.”

As the club looks ahead to next season, students are already developing new ideas and strategies for future competitions. Their success stands as a powerful example of how learning at NIS extends far beyond the classroom – empowering students to innovate, collaborate, and pursue excellence through authentic, student-driven experiences grounded in the values of the IB.