The program For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) for young students incorporates project-based learning (PBL) with designing and building wireless-controlled robots. The students are guided by experts, mostly engineers. The FIRST organization determines the theme of the robot annual competition. The goal of this research is to characterize and evaluate the effect of the FIRST program on graduates’ self-efficacy, interpersonal skills, and career choices in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The research participants included 297 FIRST graduates, mostly high schoolers, who responded to questionnaires, and five of them were interviewed. Analysis of the data showed that the FIRST program improved graduates’ interpersonal skills such as time management, teamwork skills, and self-efficacy, as well as had an impact on the graduates’ STEM career choices. The main factors impacting the graduates’ career choice was their exposure to robotics and to experts from the industry. The theoretical contribution is to the social cognitive theory (SCT) in the context of the FIRST program. Our study explains students’ career choice through correlations among students’ aspirations for choosing a career, their self-efficacy, their interpersonal skills, and their actual choice. The practical contribution lies in better understanding the robotic PBL program and expanding the STEM work force.

Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the phenomenon of distance working has rapidly increased and examining cooperation between members of virtual teams is of great importance. The aim of this study, therefore, was to specifically investigate compliance of team members in the digital, virtual setting. We hypothesized that members of structured virtual teams will show lower degrees of compliance compared to members of structured non-virtual teams. To test this hypothesis, we examined the impact of virtual team characteristics on team members’ compliance with instructions. In our experiment, 150 subjects were given a set of instructions for conducting a task in a virtual or non-virtual team setting. The main finding of this study, which were not in line with our hypotheses, indicates that members of virtual teams exhibited a higher degree of compliance with directives than members of non-virtual teams. It is possible that this difference stems, at least in part, from the formality variable that was stronger in the virtual setting. This study conclusions adds to the pool of knowledge on virtual teams and could enhance virtual team leaders’ ability to effectively lead their teams.