Re: Is Bag and Tag Necessary?
 

Teaching students should take place in the offseason. Applying the skills learned is what the real season is for. Like you said, trying to teach Calculus in 6 weeks and then giving students a test on it will work out terribly. However teaching them Calculus in an expanded and focused time period and then testing them for 6 weeks works.

Re: Is Bag and Tag Necessary?
 

Boom. Now I know what we've been doing wrong. Thanks for posting this!

Re: Is Bag and Tag Necessary?
 

I am sure we all know or have one HS student. Trying to keep the bulk of them involved in a year round program is very difficult. The majority of these kids are super streched for time and another long term commitment isn't realistic. I am sure many teams don't have the luxury of well developed off season programs. learning in the offseason does work, this is what provided us with the tools and knowledge necessary for the Mecunum drive. We didn't start at zero on week 1. However the relatively small offseason group widens the gap with the in season group creating an inefficient learning environment. Resulting in the smaller group shouldering much of the build season load. Extending the build season will not change the competitive dynamic of the game as much as the opportunity for less experienced team members to learn.

Re: Is Bag and Tag Necessary?
 

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. If you're having difficulty keeping them interested year round, then keeping them interested for a quarter-year build season doesn't sound any easier. Also, 12 weeks of build would mean that your smaller group shouldering more build season load over a longer time. Keeping a majority of the people interested and doing something, anything productive, is always going to be a struggle. You'll quickly figure out what students are genuinely interested in learning more and what students are simply there for the "fun". One of the best ways to increase the participation in off season is to make the learning fun. Off season doesn't necessarily have to be as intense as build season, and even meeting once or twice a week would be sufficient. Have the students learn by doing miniature build projects or even virtual "build" projects (Read: CAD).

Re: Is Bag and Tag Necessary?
 

We use VEX as offseason (September - December) encouragement. Students still get the concepts of game strategies, robot design, object manipulation, gear ratios, etc. in a controlled, safe, easily grasped and immediately gratifying way. If we have the time/personpower/resources, we also throw in a larger-scale project as well.
We do this on Wednesdays, 6-8p, with one adult and 10-20 students (some come after school to work in the lab as well).

Re: Is Bag and Tag Necessary?
 

Let me preface this by stating this is our second year (4134). Our school district is a urban central school struggling to meet the needs of a very diverse student body.

We ran a post season group last year that built and thoroughly tested the drive system we used this year. It was a very casual group that met 1-2 times per week until the end of the regular school year. Kids were not pressured to attend and we had some good laughs and alot of learning. The curve was much longer and we were dealing with one task.

Not all stundent want to be engineers this does not mean they are not interested and shouldn't be included. We have very involved students all the way to very casual. We have a fundraising group, an art group and CAD group. Due to the FIRST program at our school 2 new regular classes were added this year, SolidWorks and 101 robotics that uses the Lego platform with Labview programming. The FRC group bought the district the programming license.

We also have a deal in the works with the City Rec. department to provide the same Lego program to youth groups throughout the summer. This group will be led by studentds from the club and class.

What does this have to do with extending the build season 2 weeks for testing and debugging as I originally suggested?

Re: Is Bag and Tag Necessary?
 

Build season is actually four weeks long. The last two weeks are for testing and debugging.
Unfortunately, most teams don't fully take advantage of that schedule.

Re: Is Bag and Tag Necessary?
 

You Win