How to deal with lack of participation
 

Our team gained many new members over the Summer and Fall season, something us senior students were excited about. Everyone was bright eyed and full of amazement as we explained what we did and what we will do, and we thought that we finally grew from our team of 6 then juniors to a group of 20 students essentially overnight.

However, that was not the case.

Before build season, we said many times that we will spend many hours in the classroom that we operate out of, and that the team requires the utmost dedication. This immediately scared some students away, but that wasn't an issue because we still had a lot of students interested. These students claimed they would be committed to the team.

The week before build season we lose a handful of students because of sports. That's not a big issue, because that was a prior commitment made before they joined robotics and was understandable.

As build season started, we were a little disappointed that we didn't have as many students as we started with, but that was not the biggest issue. The new members who were dedicated from the start showed up frequently and stayed for the majority of the meeting. They contributed to design ideas and potential strategy.

Two weeks later, student attendance starts dropping. This was when the heavy labor started. Those who were interested in programming stopped showing up regularly, and didn't really like the idea of robotics anymore even though they haven't even started and those who were interested in building left at 4 (school gets out at 2:19 and the meetings go to 9, we allotted a 1 and a half hour time to finish homework so you do the math).

This isn't to say that they lost interest, because when the robot was almost complete attendance started rising again. They wanted to know what the robot did and how we built it, which they shouldn't even need to ask if they had shown up for the past couple meetings.

Obviously, this is an extracurricular activity. There is no obligation to show up but when you say you are dedicated we expected them to uphold that promise and show up when asked. It's understandable when you're sick or that you can't come in for one or two days, but when you go missing for weeks only to come back when all the labor's done it's not cool.

The worst is that the majority of the people actually showing up to every meeting and contributing will be graduating this year, leaving the fate of the team in the hands of flakes (some offense may or may not be intended).

With that being said how does your team deal with lack of participation? What incentives/motivations do you give to new members to stay and actually work on the robot?

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

This should have been your first sign that something was wrong. Rome wasn't built in a day; why would you expect the same of a budding program?

Why not?

Three years ago, I joined FRC 1648 and the team was much like yours. We had numbers, but we didn't have dedication, we didn't have buy in, so we changed a few things around.

Joining the team required that you fill out an application and go through some tryouts. This meant that the applicants had skin in the game and attending robotics was more than simply showing up. You earned the right to be on our team.

When on the team, there were attendance and training requirements. Why should a student who only showed up a few times during the season represent our team? That's the question we asked ourselves and answered, "He shouldn't."

Finally, we had a solid plan for new members. People are interested in robotics; that is given. But don't expect a rookie to come into the program and just "pick up" robots. Don't expect rookies to come on board and enjoy watching you build a robot. You need to have a plan to engage, train, and grow rookie talent and leadership.

- Sunny G.

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

We definitely had a plan. The senior members were supposed to act like mentors but the students dropped like flies before we could even implement our plan. We had team building exercises set up over the off-season and the works.

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

Our competition is only an hour drive away, so all of the team is welcome to come on Saturday, but only the varsity members get to take the field trip on Thursday and Friday. Participation and quality of work are the main factors feeding into varsity and officer selection. In recent years, we have also "selected" for the team, even at the junior varsity level. This year, we had massive initial interest, largely due to our air cannon, so we held formal "tryouts" up front. Programming, controls, and mechanical department student leads and mentors set up a number of challenges ranging from building a tower from blocks, to drawing an out-of-scale drawing with labels to scale, to programming a couple of servos with an arduino. The key was that we were really scoring on attitude and care in craftsmanship more than aptitude as far as being selected for the team; aptitude and requests were also factored into department assignments. By the end of tryouts, about 1/3 of the people who started had already dropped out on their own, then we culled out the team members who had shown a lack of engagement, poor quality work due to lack of trying or attention, or poor attitude (especially whining). Even after selection, if a team member misses several meetings without advance notice and importance of cause, (s)he will likely be demoted or cut. Our school also allows students to "letter" in robotics. We had letter pins custom made with the team logo: . To qualify for a letter, a team member must meet three of four criteria: fund raising, selection for varsity, participation in a (non-robot) committee, and service hours.

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

They left because they had committed several weeks to building a robot and weren't engaged at all. You said it yourself, they hadn't even started after weeks of work. I know programming can't start right away, but you need to engage people all season, especially the ones with only a minor interest. Maybe other programming challenges, like writing a scouting program, would be a good idea.

People who aren't inspired yet are going to be flaky to some extent. There will always be a few people who are truly flaky despite your best efforts, and you just have to let them go, but most of these students are failed opportunities to inspire. These students are the ones FIRST is supposed to be about recruiting - the team exists to inspire them, not the dedicated students who are already inspired.

They're probably not contributing because they don't know how, or they have been taught but they don't have the confidence to do it themselves yet. Robotics is really intimidating, even after your first how-to-lathe or how-to-prototype lesson. This is where mentoring is extra important. You've got to engage groups of new students specifically, walking them through tasks at first, then backing off bit by bit. Before you know it, they'll be doing things on their own and contributing in ways you never could have imagined. And the true flakes, they won't stick around anyway.

You speak as if these kids owe you something - that it's a privilege for them to be there, and their obligation is to make the team better. And in many ways this is absolutely true, don't get me wrong. But really, FIRST teams exist to take these passive interests and inspire the students into working hard, becoming contributors to the team, and eventually pursuing STEM education after high school. The goal is to get them to that level, and while some students might just not want to try at all, it sounds like many aren't at that level yet and they don't really know what to do. That's why they left at the tough part - where they feel least useful - and came back for the cool part, what got them involved in the first place.

Mentoring is tough. With just 1 or 2 mentors you may not be able to give these kids the attention they each need to be inspired, and it's rough. Having the older students begin mentoring to some extent really helps - older students are more relate-able for these kids than the mentors, and you should have plenty of them.

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

It's one of those "nothing succeeds like success; nothing fails like failure" situations. Reversing a decline in any group activity, whether it's a government, business, team, church, or club always requires a lot of hard work, communication, and leadership, as well as a sufficiently sized corps group who buy into regrowth and contribute.

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

Actually, our programming did start right away. As soon as we got the KoP with the new RoboRIO and downloaded the new WPIlib and eclipse, the programmers were engaged in setting up their programming environment and learning about the new control system. The controls group built a control board right from day one, not knowing exactly what the robot was going to look like. So what if we have an unused talon on the board, and took off the pneumatic module later? The programmers could practice on some basic motors and sensors to learn the new system by the time they were ready to do so, and it was only a couple more work days before we had the drive platform going.

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

As far as incentive, our team has very defined rules about attendance and associated team activity -- for example, you are not actually considered a member of the team if your attendance is below 60%, and you will not be able to attend competition as part of the team. Additionally, to be a driver or officer, your attendance must be above 85%. This tends to keep attendance up.

We also try really hard to engage our students from the get-go. We built a practice drive train to keep the mechanical rookies busy before build season, our public relations team did a lot of outreach stuff with other teams and worked on raising funds throughout the offseason, etc. Coming up with little projects for your freshmen to work on prior to build season keeps them from getting bored. I think we even had a few kids design, build, and decorate a new battery box.

Finally, we keep it going with the little things. Movie night here, Super Smash Bros tournament there. Every once in a while we all get together and get a sense of camaraderie going with the new members, so that meetings don't feel like a chore. It's a treat -- you get to go hang out with your friends and build a robot.

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

we saw similar issues with our teams this year. one thing that we do is to be eligible to go to the regional event the top 4 hours getters from each team are guaranteed to go. the rest of the team members need to write a paper explaining why they think they should come along on the trip. the Mentors and the top 4 hours getters from each team use a decision matrix to select the remaining students for a total of 16 students between the 2 teams . nobody is guaranteed to go unless they put in the hours

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

Our team allows anyone to join, but only "committed members" (usually based on hours/work done, but our attendance thing screwed up this year, so IDK how they are determining that) are given financial aid in finding hotel rooms at the events to which we go that necessitate that.

The team also offers a lot of training, and we have created a culture in which working hard is appreciated, and the students are masters (there were multiple occasions where I saw mentors learning from the students).

In the end, you can only control so much the direction in which your team goes after you leave, unless you come back as a mentor. enjoy it while you can, and do your best to make the future as good as you can as well

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

This is something I've dealt with through both of the teams ive been on. I was the media student now media mentor also was a dedicated human player. I did what some teams would call useless but there not. I participated in chairman's and made really cool videos which set an image for the team, i made and managed our social accounts and also designed shirts and buttons. All in all I had loads of fun doing all this and for the most part I was barely involved in the making of the robot. What im saying is there's more to a FIRST team than just building or programming on an robotics team. There are students on our team that come everyday to help make buttons or handouts for competitions or help make videos of your team and what its doing to make FIRST loud. Now as a mentor Im now put to the task of getting other students involved with all these things i did cause i know there useful for the team and some kids can have fun with it.

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

This can always be a problem. Much of what was previously mentioned above are great suggestions.

We start the year with roughly 100 students. We run a difficult program and by the time FRC comes around our number are down to roughly half. The veteran students are partnered with incoming students during the year, they are tasked with eventually finding their replacements by the time they graduate. The veteran students feel vested by that time and really help us mentors by identifying potential stars and help the rookies to find a niche for them that the mentors might not see.

We have been a year round program for the last few years. We compete is roughly 20 different STEM competitions throughout the year not just robotics. Probably more, I have lost count. We host two, week long, STEM camps a year that is run by the veteran students for grades 3-8 inspiring the upcoming students and eventual replacements.

This approach allows many different opportunities for rookie students to find what peaks their interest. Who you thought might be an excellent programmer, and showed desire to become one when applying, turns out to be the best fabricator.

You never know what can cause the inspirational shift in a student so we try to have as many different STEM projects as possible. Some years half the team does not do robotics at all and gets involved in things like science fair, TARC (Team America Rocketry Challenge), West Point Bridge Designer, 3d printing, Science Olympiad and many more.

The students are required to fill out an application and go through an interview, just like applying for a job. This helps them feel a sense of commitment and add some real world pressures. Many times we have students for only half the year as sports and other activities call to them. This is perfectly acceptable, and having them feel welcomed to return is important.

We know that rookies can be overwhelmed with the difficulty of FRC. Many new student do not want to put in the massive amount of time it can take from their own personal time during build season. This is normal and can cause some issues. I find, especially to a first year student to the program, that FRC is hard to “get” and intimidating. We have many work sessions prior to FRC to help build up the skills they will need. This also can help identify what roles sparks their interest.

I have found that taking the semi flaky student (as your example, starts strong then leaves just to return when the hard stuff is done) to a FRC regional can cause much more inspiration than you think.

Many times our rookies come along and basically cheer us on and watch the awesomeness that is FIRST. We will have them walk around the pits, and if interested, will help with minor pit or match scouting or even just picture taking. They come back from a regional in awe and many times very inspired to come back next year and really get into it from then on.

The energy at regional competitions along with talking with so many excited and committed students from other teams, that do so many different roles for their teams, can help generate inspiration and future commitments.

Our program is now in its 5th year, I feel we are on the right path, with 3 Engineering Inspiration and a Chairman’s Award under our belt we will continue to bring along the newbies.

Being from the big island of Hawaii our closest regional is several islands away and the cost of taking them along is high. Many of the students here have never left the island and being such a rural place have never seen a city. So the trip ends up being a real big deal to them. If we manage to have just one student change to appreciate STEM and eventually pursue higher education then it is all worth it.

The main thing to really focus on is INSPIRATION.. It is what we are all here to do..

As said so many times, it is not the robot…

Feel free to message me and I am more than happy to go into much more detail of our programs approach.

Good luck this year.
Aloha!

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

That wasn't really our issue. Our programmers were really excited for the new control system (as was I, I love new toys :p), but the rookie students were disengaged from the idea.

First Bold: Yes, we do this too. You need hours logged to be considered a member, but the issue is that some kids don't seem to care about being a member or not.

Second Bold: We have been trying to do that, we plan to get them engaged mostly in CAD and building over the summer. Hopefully they'll be more engaged and 2016 will be the year where they can really excel without us seniors coming back as college freshman to crack the proverbial whip.

Third Bold: We have not considered that, but I can definitely see how it would bring the team together. The senior members are all already friends so I think that's why we show up, because our friends are there. This is definitely something I'll bring up in our next meeting.

We did that last year. Unfortunately, we cannot hold that above their head this year because it's a week 6 event, over spring break. Since we're all out for break, we cannot stop them from showing up Thursday/Friday. We can say they are not allowed to represent our team because they weren't logged for many hours, but they just seemed so excited to be part of the team I don't think they'll listen.

Well said, we're trying to train the rookies and sophomore members of the team so that they can better handle it when the senior members graduate but obviously it didn't work out so well. Can you post some methods on how you train?

I can definitely agree with you there, different strokes for different folks. However our issue was that those who claimed they would be committed to build/programming ended up flaking, just as it happened with media/marketing. I really want to point it to disinterest but it's not because when they do show up they seem inspired by the work that those who have regularly shown up have done. Maybe it is an interest problem?

First Bold: This is interesting. I see your point in that running multiple STEM operated events will help guide students into what they want to do on the team.
Second Bold: We did this for leadership positions and it didn't work out too well, however I think we will be willing to give it a second chance if it means that we will have more active members.
Third Bold: This definitely worked for our sophomore members. When they were rookies, they left early, didn't show up to some meetings, etc but when taken to their first FIRST (heh) regional, they saw the dedication that the team had to the program and come their sophomore season stayed late working on the robot and having fun while they're at it. I definitely believe this will inspire them to work harder, but we were looking for solutions to keep them engaged before taking them to a regional. I like the idea of STEM events though.


Thank you all for your help. I will take these suggestions into consideration and talk with the rest of the Team Admins about it and hopefully we'll have a stronger team next year.

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

One thing that has worked well for us is this. Very early in pre-build, we take the Rookies and spend a lot of time doing team-building with them. We get them to get familiar with the tools, working 1:1 with veterans and mentors.

We have 2 barriers to entry into build season - sort of selection process. 1: skills tests. They have to demonstrate they have some rudimentary understanding on safe use of the basic tools. They have to know a little bit of history of the team; and they have to know a bit about FIRST. 2: We take them to off-season events. There, they see how our team works at a competition. They also see how the other teams work. Teams that are better than us in terms of motivation, funding, spirit, etc. ... They see why they are spending all of those hours during build season.

We found out much earlier on that in previous seasons that students that don't know the basic things about our team, about our history, about FIRST... and if they haven't gone to off-season games - they are just lost and not very motivated; every single one of them stopped coming soon after.

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

Easiest way to get interest is to take your students to an offseason competition in the fall. Seeing a competition live for the first time is an incredible experience that always has people coming back for more. And assumimg you're already competing in said offseason event, a good thing to try is making a basic rookie bot that you have the new members build in the fall and compete with in the offseason competition. We did this back in fall of 2012 and got one of the biggest rookie classes ever.

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

Robotics is absolutely a commitment, for the leaders and committed members at least. We, 1885, dealt with a very similar issue this year, we had so many people sign up, come sporadically and never do anything. Luckily we still had enough dedicated members so we could still work, although this required us to stay much later at our school to work. It came to the point that we just cut the members from the team who never did anything other than create distractions, and relocated the ones who had potential but who really needed to realize why they're at robotics.
I suggest tell those few kids that they need to prove themselves or they cant come. Robotics is unlike ANY extracurricular activity, so it's not ok to not live up your commitment.

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

FIRST is not just an opportunity for the students to learn and improve themselves, it is an opportunity for the adults too. I am interested to hear the answers to the OP's questions since I have some situations like that too.

Some of our new mentors have been excited about learning how to physically construct stuff. Their jobs are such that they never get to go and see what they have designed. One even took part in the oRyon RI3D.

I have been learning mainly soft skills (i.e. management of schedules and resources). Some of the students I have been working with were posting iterations of their CAD designs from mid-afternoon to 3:30AM, on a school night. On the other hand, our Media Team have not updated our web site for the last 3 weeks and have stopped showing up at meetings even though they were enthusiastic and assured us of their commitment at the last meeting they attended.

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

We have Pre-season trainings for specific skills, like milling or lathing in fabrication, as well as electronics, programming, etc. I know that we recorded these at least one time, but IDK where they are (there's definitely some Mastercam tutorials here: https://www.youtube.com/user/tahomarobotics)... The team also trains people during build season, with the more experienced students training the less experienced ones. If people aren't doing anything, the lead mentor or team president will often direct them over to the mills or something so that they can learn how to do a thing- just standing around socializing is generally frowned upon. For the women on our team, we have the Girl's generation (a preseason event) competition that we host, in which they get a kind of crash course on how to do pit work, drive, etc. (unfortunately in recent years we have been a very male heavy team; this past year another team actually helped us out, since they could not themselves participate). In the end though, the students have to want to learn these things in order to learn them, as is the case in all things. Hope I could help, even by just a little bit

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

We had similar issues our first two years. We would start with a large group of students, and by the middle of build season only a handful would be left. We implemented a few changes last summer that have had a large impact on the rate of participation:
- We implemented a team Code of Conduct with a written contract that both the student and their parent signs. In the Code of Conduct are the rules on participation at meetings and events. We found that unless we did this no one would show up to fundraising events or help with scouting.
- We implemented a system of student-led team leads. During the fall, we met weekly and each workstream had at least one project they were working on. Programmers got to work with previous robots, drive train tried out new mechanum wheels, etc. This helped keep the new kids engaged.

I'm curious as to how other teams keep track of attendance? Do you have a formal sign-in system at each meeting?

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

As a brand new mentor I appreciate the feedback in this thread. Thanks all.

I have really enjoying being part of my first build season and first regional competition (second one coming up in a few weeks).

I can resonate with some of the frustrations other teams are feeling, but from a slightly different perspective. Our team has many enthusiastic, young (grade 9) students who want to help but find it frustrating that their abilities to contribute are limited. They can't all have contradicting ideas make it into the final design. They aren't all skilled enough to write code that will benefit the final robot. They don't all have the skills needed to do much in the fabrication and assembly of the robot. (This goes for me too. I barely know how to tap a thread, let alone teach a student to do it.)

I really like some of the ideas in this thread.. ongoing tool training sessions during robotics meeting times, programming on previous years' robots (complicated this year by the switch from cRio to RoboRio, but next year we will have this year's robot as a good starting point). The enthusiasm is there, the skills and learning will come. I am excited to continue working with these students over the coming years... I hope they will stick it out.

My introduction to FIRST and FRC has been a blast. I love, LOVE the fact that students are interested in engineering and programming. I want to do everything I can to make sure they get a positive experience out of being on an FRC team, and not feel like they are useless or not able to contribute as much as "the bigger kids".

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

All teams are faced with the issue of retaining current team members and recruiting new ones. Since you are going to lose your seniors every year, recruitment has to be a part of your program. Here are some of things that our team has found to help with retention and recruitment:

1. Provide structure and organization within your team. Nothing hurts a team more than being disorganized. Define your sub-teams and what each of their roles are. Plan your meetings and communicate clearly when those meetings will take place and what objectives are to be met.

2. Plan an "Open House" either at the end of competition season or during the fall (or both). Make sure that this is well-organized and provides opportunities for the attendees to get involved with some hands-on projects. We usually have workshops set up for electronics, programming, mechanical, or business-media and have the attendees rotate through each workshop. Have a sign-up sheet and be pro-active about contacting the attendees after the event to keep them informed about your team and it's activities.

3. Invite all your current team members and potential recruits to an off-season competition. There is no better way to get people interested in FIRST.

4. Develop your mentor base. Find quality mentors that want to work with kids. This is not easy but is a key component of every successful team.

5. Have FUN! I cannot overemphasize how important this is. We all do this to have fun. If it's not fun, you are not going to retain or attract students. One of the things our team has done to keep it fun is to host a WADPAN. This stands for "work all day, play all night". We plan an intense workday, arrange a team dinner, and then break out the fun and games for an evening of team bonding.

Hope that this helps.

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

Love the idea of the team socials and opportunities for bonding. That would be a way to get everyone involved in something that isn't determined by their skill level or seniority in the team.

One of my favourite parts of working during build season was the dinners we shared together each night before getting to work. Students (well, their parents!) took turns preparing food so it wasn't all pizza, pizza, pizza. Then, at the regional, having dinners together after each long and exhausting day.

Nothing like sharing a meal to foster a sense of community!

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

Have you asked your students why they aren't participating? Obviously you have to make sure they are comfortable answering this question, but it may help you overcome your issues.

Chief Delphi is a great resource, but it doesn't always have the solution. There is a lot of great advice here, but if you don't know why the students aren't engaged, you can't solve the root cause.

I'm not sure if I missed it, but how many mentors do you have and how engaged are they in the entire season?

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

We have 2 Engineers as mentors, and 2 parents who are mentors.
One engineer is engaged all the time, the other comes once in a while. Both parents are full time.

We'd ask, if they'd show up to even the catch up meetings. It's gotten that bad. The general consensus seems to be that since build season is over nobody really cares anymore.

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

Speaking from my experience on my team we loose fully ONE HALF of our "members" to build season EVERY year. This year we only lost ONE THIRD!!!!! I would attribute this to our absolutely rabid off season training that we started this fall.

Throw them in to the fires of dedication and chaos early so that they are ready for the real deal.

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

Definitely. We weren't really hard on them in the off-season, but I guess we have to be now.
We plan to use old game designs to kind of simulate a new build season, but just to teach programming and CAD.

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

It's a good start for sure, just find ways to improve the process each year and make your team training and management more and more robust. Every team has their own groove and needs a customized fully planned out solution that works for them.

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

Try to make sure that the team does not appear TOO product driven.

By that I mean, kids should not feel like "well, the robot is finished, so they don't need me anymore / there's no point in going".

For that matter, a feeling of success on the team should not be tied to "we did well in the competitions".

It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of build season. Then be stressed at how much work is left to do on the robot, and how little time we have to practice. The more technical members of your team will be engrossed in making the robot perform well, and getting it done in a timely manner. This is the point where the more junior members of the team will start to feel left out. It is tempting to go from saying "Here Bobby, why don't you crimp this connector, I'll show you how" to "Pass me the crimpers, and go be useful somewhere else while I finish this".

Kids want to take ownership of the product. They want to know that they have contributed. Sometimes it's clear - they can point to a part and say "I built that", or "I coded that". Sometimes it is less clear. I think it would be helpful if mentors kept this in mind and made decisions in a way that encourages the work to be distributed. Don't give it all to your expert. Design for compartmentalization. And recognize all the kids for their efforts. The kid who spent every night sweeping and reorganizing the screwdrivers deserves as much recognition as the kid who coded the robot state machines.

I suspect if you interview the kids who have stopped coming, they will say things like "Well what's the point? I show up and there's nothing for me to do. Billy and Johnny are the ones who did all the work, and [they won't let me help]/[I don't know how to help]/[I tried to help but they undid whatever I contributed]". (That last one is the most frustrating and heart-breaking.)

I really like the idea of extending the team activities to do fun social things, so that it doesn't feel like it's over once the competitions are done. Give them reasons to keep coming back that are not tied to robot build, performance, or their skill level.

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

In a similar vein, failure on the field should not be tied to failure of the team. One of my best memories in FIRST is on Friday evening team meeting at a regional where our robot basically contributed nothing to our alliances all day and we mentors decided to focus on the positive and ask for kids to talk about what went well. We figured on about 10 minutes of talk on that at most. We got about 45 minutes. Saturday went no better on the field. Our robot scored once, the entire weekend. Our positives were our ability to help other teams, and how the team worked together furiously to try to resolve our mechanical and programming difficulties. Oh, and we won the GP award.

I consider it a successful season.

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

this thread has really sparked my interest as its a real problem my club faces.

We like to think we have 20-30 members but in reality we have 3 people who are always there (including myself) and then a lot of students who come once in a while. So we have like 5-6 random people there everyday but most of them dont know that they are doing and we dont have time mid build season to teach them. the other issue is we get students at random times of the year. we could be on week 4 of build season and someone new walks through the door. As much as we would like to say we are mid build season so you really cant be here. We have to let them in due to our lack of members. My mentor has adopted a quote of "How do you join? you show up. How do you get responsibility? you take it". that sound great but it ends up creating loose members and people who dont know what they are doing.

My ideas right now are
1.create a video series where we teach them everything they need to know to do a specific task.
2.have a hands on challenge (test)related to the specific task they are going for that they have to pass before they can be on the team.
3.have defined sub groups with experienced reliable members leading them.
4.market the club better by driving the robot at freshman orientation (Im expecting a huge influx of loose members but if we market it as a sports team with tryouts they will think of it as more of a commitment.


the last issue I need someone to address is what we would do with veteran members who loosely come. I feel as if when a freshman member comes all the time but sees a junior member coming once a week they will think it is acceptable to come once a week.

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

Our team only met a couple of times last fall being our first year and not knowing what to expect.

How often do some of you meet in the fall?
Obviously, with enough effort you could meet and do stuff every day, but I don't want to burn out the students OR the mentors.

Right now, I'm thinking about once every two-three weeks mostly for figuring stuff out for next year. Then maybe once a week in the fall for training/team building/media/practice/hangouts.

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

My team usually meets once or twice a week (tusedays or thursdays), with some offseason projects and training sessions mixed in there. we also like to hang out during that time, and very few of the meetings are mandatory- just an open shop for those who want it

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

Good on you. I really like this. It kind of sounds obvious but it is something I wish I had thought to do at our last regional, which went pretty much exactly like you described yours. I will for sure try to follow your lead next time.

It can help if you have more mentors. I was the newbie mentor on the software team which already had ample students and mentors. I was able to work almost one-on-one with one of the younger students who was enthusiastic but felt he couldn't contribute because he didn't know things. I often would say "Well, I don't know the answer to that either, let's find out!" and led by example an attitude of learning to solve problems. The attitude I was trying to set was "I don't need to know all the answers, I just need to know how to find them". I also tried to steer him toward successes and accomplishments within his capability so he wouldn't feel like he wasn't contributing. I received a lot of positive comments from the other mentors and even other students.

Maybe the bottom line is this. Some mentors think they are here to build a robot. I think I am here to build the students. That's what will keep them coming back.

I guess it all comes back to us needing mentors.

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

I think it would certainly help. It would give you the flexibility to do some of the suggestions mentioned in other posts, like having closer supervision, you can do separate activities with the skilled/experienced students and different ones with the less experienced ones (like simpler tasks or training) so they feel involved too. You can have more sub-teams each tasked with different deliverables. You can start looking at tasks which are indirectly robot related, like a team to shoot and edit the robot reveal video, a team responsible for running your team website or social media, a team dedicated to, I dunno, food prep for your meetings, social planning, business planning, marketing, fundraising, etc.

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

This has been an issue that our team has been combating for years...a few years ago I think I remember starting off with 30 freshman and ending the season with 2. However, we've been working really hard on it and this year I think we started with around 25-30 freshman and have only lost about 5.

To combat this issue in the offseason, we meet about once a week for general meetings and updates, however, just about every weekend in the offseason we have either trainings happening for new members, or a community service event.

Joining a team can be more than intimidating for rookie members. All of the older students seem to know so much more, and mentors are terrifying. It's really easy to get lost in the shuffle. What our team does to combat this is a requirement that ever rookie member earn certifications in at least 2 domains of the team. For example, if a student wants to become certified in electronics, they go to 3-4 classes taught by the leadership student in charge of electronics, take an informal test and then are officially certified to work in that department during the season. Along with giving us a competent workforce come kickoff, the program allows rookie members to get involved and excited to do what they learned about.

Another thing is off season competitions. I can't stress this enough. My rookie year, I fell in love with robotics at Battle at the Border, by meeting new people and getting to see other robots. Off seasons really give students an idea for what they signed up for, and give them an idea of what they are working towards.

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

yea I guess I am 4 teams (I do the website, video, photos, and marketing basically alone)

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

Funny you mentioned battle at the border, we were definitely gonna go and bring all the new members but our modifications to the robot didn't meet the deadline...

Off-season events do seem to be a common suggestion, and I definitely see how it helps bring in new members and "indoctrinate" them :P

Re: How to deal with lack of participation
 

I agree with what most people have been saying about holding workshops for new members, maintaining a positive attitude, and trying to make sure that new members are engaged and feel able to contribute. Additionally, I think it's important to make rookies feel that they are a part of the team from the start. My team has older members talk to them and teach them, rather than leaving all of the instruction to mentors. Team-building activities can be great, but from my experience, it's really important to make sure that new members also get a chance to work with and learn from their teammates, as it allows them to get to know them better as well as showing them that the older members make mistakes and thus won't judge them for being confused or making mistakes themselves. We always try to emphasize that you don't need to know anything when you join the team and that all you need is to be willing to learn.

That said, different people are inspired in different ways. Some people feel most comfortable having someone helping them along and checking their work to start with (in which case we've found it's best to let them work with you--tell them what needs to get done and give them step-by-step instructions on how to do it and why each step is necessary if there's time), but others prefer to be more independent earlier on. My favorite memory from my freshman year was being assigned to build a prototype for a frisbee intake partway through Build Season. I was working with a bunch of other rookies, and we worked essentially on our own. Yes, we messed up a lot, but we also knew that what we were creating was being created by us, and that with every iteration, it got closer to becoming something that would work, which was something I don't think many of us had experienced before. It was some of the most fun I've ever had, and even though we never had time to actually use it, creating a mechanism that actually worked was one of the most inspiring things I had ever experienced. And inspiration and a sense that you're learning something seem to be the things that keep people on a team.

Because different people find different things inspiring, if possible, we've found that it works to have multiple types of activities open. We allow rookies to work with mentors or more experienced members if they want to, but also give them independent projects if they'd prefer that. People will eventually gravitate towards the areas and learning environments in which they feel most comfortable.

People like to feel like they're contributing to the robot. If you have a machine shop, the rookies on my team last year enjoyed fabrication. They didn't have to have a strong understanding of robotics in order to contribute, but they learned these concepts as they went because they usually ended up assembling the mechanisms they made, so they got to see how they worked. There were also immediate, tangible results when they worked, which I think helped.