Here's a pattern that surprises a lot of educators: strong technical ability and strong communication confidence don't automatically travel together. Research on STEM students consistently finds they often lack oral communication confidence despite having genuinely strong technical skills — a student can fully understand how their robot works and still freeze when asked to explain it clearly to a judge, a panel, or an audience. STEM competitions matter precisely because they force these two skills to develop together, rather than letting communication lag years behind technical ability, as so often happens in a purely classroom-based education.
The Research on Confidence, Specifically
A three-year study across 12 public schools in Barcelona, involving 318 students in grades 4 to 6, ran a structured competition-style workshop where students built technological prototypes using tools like Scratch and Makey Makey. The results showed significant improvements in students' self-efficacy — their belief in their own ability to succeed at a task — with moderate to large effect sizes on confidence and active information-seeking. Strikingly, the gains were particularly pronounced among girls, a group often underrepresented in STEM fields and, research suggests, more likely to underestimate their own technical ability going in. A competition format, in other words, doesn't just build confidence broadly — it appears to build it most where it's needed most.
Separate research on scientific communication training has found that when students receive structured instruction on how to communicate science effectively, it increases not just their understanding, but their confidence and their sense of identity as a scientist — a shift that research links to greater engagement and stronger retention in STEM fields overall.
Why Competitions Build Communication in a Way Regular Classes Don't
1. There's a real audience with real stakes. Explaining a project to a teacher who already understands the material is very different from explaining it to a judge who's seeing it for the first time and deciding whether it's convincing. That real evaluative pressure is uncomfortable — and it's exactly what builds genuine communication skill, not classroom-only performance.
2. Students have to translate technical work into a clear story. A robotics build or coding project only becomes a strong pitch when a student can explain why it matters and how it works, in a way a non-expert can follow. That translation skill — bridging technical depth and clear communication — is one of the most valuable, and rarely explicitly taught, skills in STEM education.
3. Repeated exposure lowers anxiety over time. Research on public speaking training consistently shows that structured practice reduces anxiety and improves performance, with the largest gains among students who started with the lowest confidence. A student's first competition pitch is rarely their best. Their fifth usually is.
4. Team presentations build a different kind of confidence. Many STEM competitions require team pitches, where students collectively defend a shared project. This builds a specific form of confidence — trusting your own contribution within a group presentation — distinct from, but just as valuable as, solo public speaking.
Why This Matters Beyond the Competition Itself
The confidence and communication skills built through STEM competitions don't stay confined to competition day. A student who has learned to explain a technical project clearly and confidently to strangers carries that same skill into college interviews, job interviews, and eventually, into presenting ideas at work — contexts where being technically right isn't enough if you can't communicate it persuasively.
How STEM-Xpert Builds Confidence and Communication Alongside Technical Skills
This is exactly why STEM-Xpert's programs are built around students presenting their work, not just building it quietly, from Grade 1 to 12:
- Robotics Labs and AIoT Labs, where students don't just build robots and connected systems — they regularly explain their design choices and troubleshoot in front of peers and mentors, building real-time communication skill.
- STEM Innovation Kit — India's first IoT-enabled STEM kit, giving students original projects worth genuinely presenting and defending, not identical, pre-scripted builds.
- Crinnoboard, our own AI-IoT development board, supporting projects technically substantial enough to give students something real to communicate confidently about.
- Composite Skill Labs and Kaushal Bodh centres, aligned with CBSE's CTAI framework, embedding regular presentation and communication practice into Robotics, Coding, AI, and IoT learning.
- Tinkering Labs and Innovation Spaces, giving younger students their first low-stakes experience explaining what they've built, before the pressure of a formal competition ever arrives.
- STEM Facilitator Course, training educators to build structured opportunities for students to present and explain their work regularly, not just occasionally before a big event.
The Bigger Picture
Technical skill and communication confidence don't develop on the same timeline by default — and without deliberate practice, a technically gifted student can still struggle to be heard or understood. STEM competitions close that gap by forcing students to build and explain in the same breath, under real conditions, repeatedly. The research is clear that this benefits every student, and benefits some of the most underrepresented students in STEM the most. For a school, building this kind of regular presentation practice into STEM learning isn't a soft add-on. It's what turns a technically capable student into one who can also be persuasive, visible, and confident about what they've built.
If your school wants to build confidence and communication alongside technical skill — through Robotics Labs, AIoT Labs, the STEM Innovation Kit, the Crinnoboard, or Composite Skill Labs — get in touch with STEM-Xpert to see how our programs can be set up for your students, from Grade 1 to 12.
FAQs
1. Why do technically strong STEM students sometimes struggle with communication and confidence? Research shows communication confidence and technical skill often develop on separate timelines — a student can deeply understand a subject without having had structured practice explaining it clearly to others. Competitions and presentations close that gap through repeated, real practice.
2. Do STEM competitions especially help students who start with low confidence? Yes. Research on structured competition-style workshops found particularly strong self-efficacy gains among initially less confident students, including girls, who are often underrepresented in STEM fields.
3. How does presenting a project differ from just building it, in terms of skill? Building requires technical understanding. Presenting requires translating that understanding into a clear, persuasive explanation for someone who doesn't already know the material — a distinct skill that needs its own deliberate practice.
4. How does STEM-Xpert build communication skills alongside technical ones? Through Robotics Labs, AIoT Labs, the STEM Innovation Kit, and Composite Skill Labs for Grade 1 to 12, students regularly present and defend their own original projects, guided by educators trained through our STEM Facilitator Course to build presentation practice into everyday learning.
Fasalu Rahman CEO, STEM-Xpert
About Author Fasalu Rahman C is an education entrepreneur, STEM advocate, and the Founder & CEO of STEM-Xpert.
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