Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I just took quick pole of lead mentors in my area. The group was split evenly with ALL of the teachers saying "We need our Bag Day" and us non teachers saying No Bag would help the team. I didnt expect that perfect a division.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Jim shows in Point 3 of his paper that there is a reasonable correlation between OPR and team retention. Everyone knows that correlation is not causation, but the correlation does allow us to use OPR as a reasonable proxy for team retention. Teams that have low OPRs are also more likely to fold than teams with high OPRs. Likewise, teams that fold tend to have lower OPRs. Team retention data is probably near to as close as we can get to quantifying the "success of FRC teams" using publicly available data.

We can disagree about how specific policies will impact OPR distributions, team retention rates, or the correlation between the two, but at the present time, OPR does indeed seem to be a reasonable proxy for a given FRC team's success.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Overall I feel like it wouldn't be the end of the world for FIRST to at least try out no stop build day. Someone mentioned that we launch a study but I really don't see how any study is going to be worth anything unless it's actually implemented. Everyone has their idea of what the effects of no stop build day would be but no one really knows for sure. If FIRST can survive trying out regolith, minibot/can arm races, the 2010 ranking system, and no defense, I don't think it is that unreasonable to implement no stop build day for 2018 just to see what the actual results are.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

While it wouldnt hurt per say, I dont think FIRST should just try it out. If they ever decide to stop the stop build day, there is no turning back.
They created this situation by allowing an xx lb allowance back when teams were unable to access their shops/robots because of forces beyond their control. As a result, that little window they allowed has drastically changed the landscape for many teams in how they approach the build season and the philosophies that go with it. What magnified the situation was the creation of bag/tag to alleviate the growing demand, needing more and more sponsorship from FedEx to send robots to events as the standard. While the mentality towards build season has changed for many teams....i.e. building 2 robots, I dont believe that FIRST overall has changed their philosophy for why they created FRC. Even with the new strategic plan demonstrated by the pillars of FIRST, I think that mission, while updated, fundamentally remains unchanged.
With or without this survey, I believe they are at crossroads because the vehicle they created of getting kids inspired by STEM was a competition. You have folks that care more about the inspiration part and you have others that are passionate about the competition part. I see FIRST having to bend on some of their initial philosophies and mission in order to get rid of the 6 week build season window, while at the same time, making it easier for teams that want to compete at a higher level.

Once you stop the stop build day, the "6 week" term goes out the window forever and the ramifications will be enormous. I just hope that whatever suggesions are made and used, will be a positive step in the right direction for all.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Nope - For exactly the reason you just gave. Correlation definitely is not causation. Both of the symptoms you mention, and more, could easily be symptoms of something more fundamental that would be essentially unaffected by the SBD. My belief is that this is the case. They are symptoms of a more fundamental problem that is insensitive to SBD machinations. In recent previous discussions I have explained that.

And
Eliminating a true- or pseudo-SBD is certainly not the only way to affect a struggling team's retention (and/or OPR); and IMO isn't the best way. For a reason to agree, see the recent post in this thread that describes some teachers' feelings.

Blake

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I've read all the posts and re-thought what would help level the playing field.
In the NFL, each year top teams lose players and that keeps things interesting.

So let's give each team in a district that failed to reach a regional, extra unbag time or a bag free next season. Team on the Regional system that failed to make the elimination rounds, get the same offer.

Either that or just to a test year and give everyone a bag free year!

Having to wait for 2018 is harsh. I found it very disruptive to deal with the possibility of not having 775 motors. That was a way bigger issue than not needing to build a 2nd robot. I would like to see Frank change his mind and kill the bag for 2017.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I'm reading this as "if you failed to reach eliminations at all last year here is some benefit to help you".

As a concept, I like the idea. However, I'd like to see some evidence to back it's usefulness. Is there any evidence that extra time with the robot would be effective for these teams? Many of the perpetually underperforming teams I've observed have larger systemic issues that will not be addressed with a 6 month build season let alone an extra 6 days of hands on time with the robot.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

What is the risk of trying?

If it doesn't it doesn't make a difference, I don't see a downside.
If it does make a difference, great!
More competition and more teams learn the value of iterating their design.

Either way we learn from trying something new.

Dave

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

There isn't really a downside to trying it. But I prefer not to add logistical headaches without some basis in fact.

I'm for stopping bagging. But I also understand that it would have minimal real impact for low performance teams on their competitiveness [1]. More impactful would be figuring out why so many teams continue to ignore the resources placed in front of them (Ri3D, kitbot, various build days hosted by teams) and figuring out how we can develop more resources and get them used.

Example - how many teams at your events failed to reliably drive? I seem to see at least one per event that's using the kitbot but wiring or programming was too hard. How many fail to move in auto? For me, way too many teams fell into that category. So, the question becomes why? The kitbot can be put together by following instructions. The wiring can be done similarly. And for the most part driving should work fine out of the box. But why is it still so hard?



[1] Yes GBlake, I view this as an important goal in itself, I'm not speaking to "success". I'm solely looking at methods of addressing teams that consistently miss eliminations. I have reasons for this and am more than willing to discuss them via PM if you'd like.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Even if we suppose that there is currently a correlation between OPR and team retention (which I have some dispute with, at least until more data is released), that doesn't mean that correlation will carry forwards if you take steps to increase OPR. That is to say, the concept of eliminating bag day to raise OPR of teams doesn't mean that fewer teams will fold since we have yet to establish a causal relationship between OPR and team attrition. If teams are folding from a variety of other stressors (under funding/under mentorship/no school support/burn out/etc), raising their OPR will not save those teams from folding.

To put it another way, basing actions purely on the correlation is treating a symptom, not the disease.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Do you hope to contribute to the discussion or just $@#$@#$@#$@# on things other people post?

You state what is wrong and what is not the correct metric. What are the correct metrics then?

What are the two kinds of people in the world?

Sorry these amazing mentors want the FIRST Robotics Competition to be built around the notion of competition.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I have no problem with "competitiveness" used in the sense you did (and you don't need my permission anyway :)).

The reason it has become a red flag for me (YMMV), is that the conversation here on CD almost always quickly moves to (or begins with) competing (with a high chance of success) for the blue banner, instead of focusing on being able to enjoy an event because you are able to join your colleagues in a match.

I had my first serious conversation about the distinction between the two possible meanings over a decade ago. That opened my eyes. There are definitely (at least) two slants to the way that word is used, and often people talk right past each other when they use it.

Blake

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Just because you don't see value in this thread from atop your lofty perch doesn't mean the rest of us don't. The potential elimination of Stop Bag Day would be program altering and defining change, with potential impacts beyond what any of us can imagine. It's natural that people will want to discuss this at length, and it's important that they do so. FIRST just put out a survey to address this topic, yet you're telling the passionate participants of this program that they should stop discussing simply because you, a person who for all I can tell hasn't been a part of this program for over 10 years, don't like it? If I sound frustrated it's because I am. You repeatedly come into these discussions telling people how they should feel and that their opinions are simply wrong. It's one thing to have healthy disagreements, it's another to try and shutdown discussion. (Especially when it's adult on a forum directed at high school students.) So you may think the posters here are egregiously lopsided, but perhaps if you spent more time listening, and less time shouting people down, you might learn something from this thread. I know I have.

Thanks to everyone else on both sides of the coin who've shared their opinions. As stated above, this potential change would affect every single participant in this program. It's important that everyone makes sure their opinion and perspective is heard and understood.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Take a breath Askash.

I try to take my cues from some amazing mentors named Woodie, Dean, and Dave. Furthermore, I try to listen carefully beyond the slogans and catch phrases. They purposefully created a program containing compromises, in which the desire to focus on competing is in tension with other goals, and they plainly asked all participants to avoid being seduced too much by the competition tool the program uses.

When I began in FRC, I was 100% focused on the competition. What I learned from Woodie, Dean, and Dave in my first year, taught me a different motivation.

Other people's experiences and thoughtful consideration of the same things I heard from W, D, and D, gave/give them their own motivations.

Joe's post said the paper is a home run. I said it isn't. I also offered that opinion without rehashing the still valid and invalid arguments on both sides of the topic. My reasons are already a matter of public record, and I hoped you would remember them. You were around when I wrote them.

I would delight in spending a day, face-to-face with respected CD friends, including Jim and Joe, untangling the hype that surrounds this subject, and subsequently putting together a funded plan that would separate symptoms from causes, would separate fact from fiction, and would recommend one path for improving FRC. Discussion threads aren't very useful for accomplishing that. They are a step along the path, but are nowhere near the finish.

Blake
What is the metric? Something along the lines of introducing students to enough positive STEM experiences to open their eyes to the possibility that they might enjoy a STEM career. To do that you don't even need to have competitions. You might choose to use competitions, but they aren't required.
Who are the two kinds of people? Those who agree with the motivations and conclusions of Jim's write-up, and those who don't. It's by no means a slam dunk that the paper's methods, conclusions, or recommendations are irrefutable or best. Reasonable people can and do disagree (see some other posts in this thread). Jim is reasonable. I think I am too.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Kathik - From my lofty perch I challenged authors (the frequent flyers know who they are) to contribute something new rather than bang their old drums loudly. With respect, the discussion would benefit from that. - Blake

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

And yet you have contributed nothing.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I completely agree. We can't know that the correlation between OPR and team retention will hold if/when we change fundamental aspects of FRC. I thought that I had made that clear.


I was responding to this statement:
I am fully 100% aware that correlation is not causation. However, gblake is going a step further by essentially denying that any correlation even exists in the present. This correlation could very well be diminished if we eliminated bag day, or it might increase. We don't know, what we do know though, is that OPR and team retention seem to be relatively strongly correlated in the present. If gblake wants to deny the usefulness of OPR as a metric for team success, that is fine, but it is fallacious to say that OPR is a poor metric for team success in the present just because it might not be correlated with team retention in the future.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Sigh

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I'm pretty sure I never said that the correlation doesn't exist. Quite the opposite.
I am saying that FIRST or anyone basing their actions on correlation rather than causation would be a mistake, because it would be gambling (give or take some windage that comes from what their gut tells them) rather than managing.

I am implying that FIRST or anyone else involved should (hopefully, quick like a bunny) dig deeper to find root causes, and also learn (as a result of experiments) which of several approaches to managing the subject create the best cocktail of improvement techniques.

It might turn out that eliminating tools-down in all its forms is the a part of the solution. I am skeptical of that, but during experiments, the chips will fall where they may.

Blake

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

We have yet to hear your opinion along with a bit justification after 10 posts. Feel free to link what you have said in the past because after some searching I found nothing.

I infer you want to keep bag and tag, but I do not understand the reasons why. You have contradicted yourself a few times along the way making it really unclear. You seem to want anyone with a different opinion to shut up and let FIRST HQ make the decision, but clearly based on them creating a survey they want to hear what we think about this topic.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Sigh

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Blake,

Just out of curiosity...

What is your issue with the argument against SBD?

You do not list FRC involvement in your profile, rather FTC and VRC. Both of those competitions do not have a stop build day.

What gives you the right to tell FRC mentors, students, volunteers, etc. that the movement they are trying to spur is stupid and not worth their time, when that exact movement is promoting something that FTC and VRC, the programs that you support, both already have.

You have no substantial evidence to argue, and are telling people presenting serious sets of data they are wasting their time.

Is Jim Zondag's Paper just a blast from the past? (The correct answer is NO). You are telling us that our discussion is meaningless and should just be links to past posts. FIRST has changed. It has evolved. There is new data to be presented and we should be discussing this development of SBD every year, as the Data in Jim's paper presents. SBD is very recently become more of an issue than in years past (at least that is how I interpreted JZ's data).

Stop wasting my time, the other poster's in this thread's time, and (even though I don't care about it) your time.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

11 posts and we are all anxious to hear your opinions. Too bad all we have been getting are sighs.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Blake-

Following the vein of scientific method (objective experimentation, identifying measurable variables, etc). I'm really curious if you could share one (or more) of your own hypotheses that would counter the one Jim (among others) has outlined? Discussing THAT would actually lead to meaningful discussion, I think.

Standing back and simply saying 'we need more experiments' makes it difficult for people who view Jim (among others) findings as pretty conclusive. We need to see the other options, other potential causes, etc.

-Brando

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Instead of updating the "sigh" post, I'll create this one

There was a recent thread on team sustainability: here

Someone using the ID Sperkowsky participated in that thread: here

Someone using the ID gblake participated in that thread:
here, here, here, here, and here, and in other places.

I found those by searching for "build season".

Brandon,

I agree. One suggestion I made recently is in the links above. It is the one I would put at the top of my list of things to try. There are others that are different or are variations on that theme.

Blake

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

You said that:

Why do you believe it is incorrect? The only reason I would ever say a metric/proxy is incorrect is if it had a small or negative correlation with the variable in which we were actually interested. In fact, I might go so far as to say that we shouldn't even use the words correct and incorrect when describing metrics. We should probably only call metrics "useful" to varying degrees. Do you think team retention is not a good metric/proxy for team success? That could be a valid argument. However, you seem to be saying OPR is a poor metric just because some might use OPR to advocate for policies you disagree with under the incorrect assumption that correlation=causation.



Let me give an alternative example:
Atmospheric CO2 levels has been pretty strongly correlated with average global temperature over the past couple hundred thousand years [1]. Thus, most would say that atmospheric CO2 measurements have been a useful (correct) proxy for global temperature. Many others though, will say that CO2 measurements are an "incorrect proxy/metric" solely because they don't want to deal with the possible implications of the correlation existing. On my linked website, it says:

The relationship is not simple, both of these variables play off of each other, as well as interacting with thousands of others. The correlation is still strong though, which makes atmospheric CO2 levels a useful metric for global temperature.


If you disagree that OPR and team success will remain coupled if we eliminate bag day, that is a perfectly respectable position. I don't believe though that it is a respectable position to discredit useful metrics out of fear of that others might misuse the information contained within them.



[1] http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globa...re-change.html

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

That is sort of a separate issue though. My response was more geared towards promoting FRC with people not familiar with it already.

All I'm saying is that if you did have unlimited access from kickoff through competition season, you could still market it as, an "8 week build season", without much impact on the reaction it elicits from newcomers.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Teams with a small amount of mentors tend to have a low OPR.
Teams with a small amount of mentors tend to be victims of attrition.
Teams with low OPR tend to be victims of attrition.

Solution: Let's fix the OPR problem by allowing teams more plays and/or unbag time.

Possible result: already thin-stretched mentors get more burnout faster, and the attrition actually increases as fringe teams fall away.*

OPR is a symptom, not the disease.

Perhaps this is an example of a conflation of symptoms at which gblake and others have been hinting.

(And the small number of mentors example is one of a myriad of possible challenges teams face. Please don't take my example as a one-and-only offering.)
(Also please don't take this as an opinion of my being pro- or anti-SBD. I honestly don't know where I stand yet.)

*Paradoxically, by dropping some of the low-performing teams, the 'product' will get better and more media friendly. That's a tangent for another day (and another thread methinks)

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Ah!
I thought you thought I wrote that OPR and Team Retention aren't correlated. Jim's paper shows that they are.

On the subject of whether OPR would be the useful metric to use gauging team's success, I did intend to convey that IMO the correlation between OPR and Team retention doesn't make OPR the metric to use (focus on, lead with, etc.) in conversations about whether teams are successful.

In the PS: section of another post today, I did mention the domain I prefer. It is very different from the domain containing OPR. What I wrote there was

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Then why not give students more time around said STEM experiences by not making them put their creation in a trash bag?

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Because students burnout to. If the build season was just one weej longer last year, it would have been great for our small team. But build season always hurts our grades, and adding another week of suboptimal schoolwork would have put many of the students on my team even farther behind. There are still plenty of ways to continue the stem experience, like watch week 1 competitions or preparing for competition. Extending the build season will not expamd the experience any farther than it already is, but wil insteadl negatively the students.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I have yet to hear a truly convincing argument that eliminating bag day would significantly increase the amount of work most teams do.

In all of my FRC experience, I've only ever built a practice bot once, but I've worked on something or another between the end of build season and the start of competition every single year.

So, this doesn't seem to me an issue of "not increasing the workload." We might be able to reduce the workload were we to instead implement harsher restrictions on the ability of teams to work after bag day, but it is not clear to me a) how these would actually work in practice and b) whether that's actually desirable in the first place.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I understand your issue.

However, upon a bit more investigation I think ending SBD will actually help students to NOT burn out.

Here's why:

Lets say a students spends 5hrs/day 5 days/wk at build, that's fairly common among teams from my understanding. That would equate to 25 hours a week, and over the 6 week build season (although that in itself is a myth), would mean the student spent 150 hours of their time at robotics.

Now, lets get rid of stop build day.

The build season now becomes longer, and the robot doesn't have to be done in 6 weeks. This opens students up to not having to cram hours in during the 6 week period.

Let's decide to enter a week 2 competition. Now we have 9 weeks to prepare a robot, instead of 6.

Let's also cut down hours/day to 3.5, giving students more time to focus on homework, or other activities they may want to participate in.

3.5hrs/day and 5 days/wk is 17.5 hours/wk, 7.5hrs/wk less than the current schedule.

Now for the cool stuff!

17.5hrs/wk over 9 weeks is 157.5 hours total spent on the robot!

By actually saving more hours a week and allowing us to spread the time out further, we have actually prevented burn out, AND spent more time on the robot.

Morale of the story: By removing SBD, it does not require you to work your same schedule for longer weeks. It allows you to better manage your time spent on the robot, prevent burnout, and potentially create a better machine.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I will give you an example using my team's numbers:

My team has about 120 students. During the build season, they're required to meet 3 hours per day, every day, after school to be considered on the team. Keeping all students occupied and out of trouble is a huge undertaking in itself.

After stop build day, there are about 20 dedicated students that will continue to meet or work on robotics, but the work is infrequent and not mandatory for everyone.

If stop build day is removed and our build season is extended, I doubt we'd keep a "team-only" stop build date. Our build season would be extended just like everyone else's, and that would significantly increase the amount of work - 300 student hours / day. Those 300 hours could be spent on schoolwork, athletics, jobs, other activities.

Not to mention, the school's coach of the robotics team is compensated extra the same as an assistant cheerleader coach. If the build season is extended any longer, we would have a very hard time finding teachers to sponsor the team.

Other than the size of my robotics team, I don't think my team is unique in how it would treat no stop build date.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

This is one of my least favorite things from being a student to a mentor. As a student it's annoying to have the reason you want to be there cut off for no apparent reason. It is less fun and it never did anything for me. As a mentor it sucks that all this extra time I could spend doing more hands on teaching work is wasted right when the students are most engaged with the program.

The most effective time to teach is when we are building the robot. The most effective teaching tool I have gets locked when it is most effective.


Also since it's very contested...

The mentor burnout thing makes no sense to me in the context of pro vs anti bag.

Why not meet less often?

My anecdote:

We have 7 people who regularly help us with technical roles. 5 full time workers, one collage student (me), one retiree. None of us get burnt out because we spent X total hours working. We get bunt out if we spend long hours day after day taking up most of a week and don't get time for other things during said time frame. I could work on robots twice a week for months and never burn out but 5 to 6 days a week for two weeks is really hard.

The only thing we actually need is consistent commitment from key mentors. The bag day is what forces that to be 2-4 days a week then 5-6 when something inevitably goes wrong in the late game. Why can't we just spread out our work the way that works best for our team? Why can't you just set your own schedule, stick to it so you don't burn out, and let us do what makes us more sustainable?

Stuffing all the work in to a shorter time frame is worse for burnout and hurts our team.

EDIT:
Thank you.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Why, though? It's not as if, even in the absence of the resources to build a second robot, there's a dearth of things to work on between bag day and competition. Your team is already making a choice to arbitrarily cease work on a certain date - why would the removal of the bag requirement force you to change that policy?

Re: mentor burnout, the worst burnout I've ever experienced was scrambling in 2014 to build a practice bot from scratch over spring break so that we could test our code on an actual robot, which we had not been able to do before bag day. (In addition to costing me my mental and physical health, this cost several team parents quite a bit of money out-of-pocket). This would not have happened in the absence of bag day. So, the notion that removing bag day would help me, as a mentor, to not burn out is flatly inconsistent with my experience.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Can you understand the difference between FIRST telling a student they must stop working on their robot on a certain day and a mentor telling a student they must stop working on their robot on a certain day?

The perspective is, "I think that rule is stupid!" versus, "I think that mentor is mean!"


Robotics and sports practice do not mix. Robotics and after school jobs do not mix. Robotics and after school activities do not mix. Any day spent after school on robotics is a day that can't be used elsewhere, and increasing the number of days spent on robotics decreases the number of days spent doing other things.

That will cause burnout.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

FIRST doesn't tell students that they must stop working on a certain day, they tell students that the robot must be placed in a bag on a certain day. The two are extremely different, and almost all of the students I've ever worked with have felt the same.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Just saying that you have more than 6 weeks for build, and it's easier to explain to people that we get 6 weeks, rather than 45.5 days. It's 3.5 days that you are saying make not a 6 week season, but when rounded to the nearest week, it is in fact 6 weeks.


EDIT: Realized that I was only on page 11 of 16....why is this so long?

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Okay! Cool!

Lets do some more anecdotal math using the same starting numbers.

5hrs/day, 5days/wk, 6 weeks = 150 hours

4.5hrs/day, 4days/wk, 9 weeks = 162 hours

We have cut a little bit of time each day, and an entire day each week! AND WE HAVE SPENT MORE HOURS ON OUR ROBOT! :ahh:

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Trying to do robotics and too many other sports/clubs/activities will cause burnout no matter if SBD exists or not.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Parkinson's Law: work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion

ending stop build day would not necessarily mean you spread the same amount of time over a longer period. It could easily mean that you expand your work to try to accomplish more stuff, increasing the overall amount of time spent at robotics.

If FIRST did away with stop build day, there'd be no way for them to prevent that. However, we can, as a community, make an effort to shape our overall expectations towards the goal of tapering off work after 6 weeks. There's been some discussion, should stop build day go away, about the possibility of "week-0" events happening any time between week-0 and your competition. If we make a concerted effort, across all of FIRST, to keep week-0 events on week-0, then that could provide the impulse to get the robot done in 6 weeks, get some testing in at an event, then spend the rest of the time before your event on improvements or fixes for issues. But if you wait until right before your week 6 event to go to a "week-0" event, then that doesn't really happen. Instead, you've just expanded your work to fill 11 weeks instead of 6.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

The dedicated students and mentors on my team all either have varsity sports (myself and about 80% of our leadership team) or jobs that go until 5. We all put in over 300 in a 6 week build season. Please don't argue that robotics and sports don't mix.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I've yet to hear any suggestion for an enforceable policy that would result in teams not being able to gainfully work after bag day, especially one that would not be far harder to bypass for low-resource teams than for high-resource teams (which is the fundamental problem with bag day as it currently exists, in my mind).

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Good luck finding a high school sports team that will let a student practice only 1 day / week, or a job that lets a student work only 1 shift / week...

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Then meet fewer days a week for more hours per day over a more weeks.

Or just do ~"45" days like you would otherwise...

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Again, I had 2.5 hour long varsity sports every school day in high school, showered and went to robotics afterwards from about 5:30 to 10:30. Your logic is completely flawed.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

WOah, what calendar are you looking at?

7-4=1?!?!?!?!?!

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

No, teams can continue to work after stop build... but the fact that you have the robot in a bag means that very, very many, if not most, teams take a break after bagging the robot, and the level of work significantly decreases. Take away the bag, and you risk losing that - That's kind of the whole point of my post. Create an incentive for teams to finish their robot early and many will, which will by definition help to decrease the load after that point.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Not every robotics team is setup the same way, in the same way that not every track and field, baseball, tennis or golf team is the same. Conflicts will vary by school and by team, but having a short build season lets students pursue other activities.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Our team captain quit his job busing tables from 6pm to 2am on Fridays and Saturdays because a day of school for 6.5 hours-meeting 2.5 hours-work 8 hours-sleep for 6 hours-meeting 9 hours-work 8 hours somehow wasn't feasible for him. Under a no SBE situation, he still likely would have been able to handle that job long term because those are the only two meeting days we would not cut. On the other hand, we had a member of the drive team who could have been more involved in drama under SBD because MTWR meetings would be significantly cut across what would also be the early spring musical and late spring One Acts seasons. At the same time, we had a member of the drive team who would not be able to function as well with no SBD because her family business of running a food truck sees a lot more time in the spring than the winter.

These situations happen on a case by case basis and create a lot of noise that detract from the overall argument. There will be activities that conflict with robotics out of season, and in season, until the end of time, regardless of how often a team meets. The fear of students running the risk of adding too much to their plate exists with SBD.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

That is great that it worked for you but many teams are unable to work that late for one reason or another. On my current team we only work until 6pm M-F with maybe 1 or 2 Saturdays during the build season. So for our team sports and robotics don't mix well at all.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Again, this has not been my experience, and I've not been mentoring teams who have practice bots. The quantity of work does decrease after bag day, but certainly not to the point where it's insignificant, and the biggest result of having the robot in the bag is that the resulting post-bag-day work is extremely inefficient and frustrating for teams that are not sufficiently well-off to have a practice bot to work on.

It seems that your argument is that the extremely regressive effects of the current policy discourage many low-resource teams from pursuing post-bag-day work. This argument seems to me sort of perverse - it is arguing that removing artificial restrictions on low-resource teams (i.e., the pragmatic effect of the current policy) is bad because more teams would then choose to take advantage of the resources they're currently (unfairly) prevented from using efficiently.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

You really don't seem to be grasping my point. I'm not necessarily arguing for or against SBD, but rather for an expectation of work hours that is similar to what many teams have right now. What I don't want to see is a 150-hour, 6 week build season turn into a 300-hour 12 week build season. You may believe everyone is already doing that, but I can tell you from my experience that it is a relatively small percentage of teams.

My team, for example, goes from meeting 15 hours a week to maybe 3 after stop build day (And trust me - no one in MN would say my team is low-resource). It's a huge change that allows students to get caught up on work and enjoy other activities. Many of my students in the past have started up with golf, soccer, softball, or other spring activities shortly after stop-build, and if we were to extend our normal meeting times for another 6 weeks those students would either have to drop out of the team at that point or drop their spring activities. Do you want to force them to make that choice just because you want a robotics activity that spans multiple sport seasons?

What my whole post was saying was that yes, teams that WANT to can keep working at a break-neck pace for 12 weeks. Buts we can work as a community to create a culture that supports more manageable time investments, and I think you'd find a lot of teams willingly go along with it. But if we instead create a culture that expects everyone to work full-out for 12 weeks, it could be damaging to the program as a whole.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I think the only way to effectively move towards this in a fair manner would be to eliminate the long time period between stop build day and the first week of competitions. I'm open to suggestions for other policies that might have the same effect without the logistical issues, but I can't think of any and don't recall ever coming across any feasible ones.

I would argue that the culture you warn against already exists, in large part, and to the extent that it doesn't exist among lower-resource teams, its absence is mostly explained by the regressive impact of stop-build-day.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I have to admit that when I received this survey, I was concerned that some hidden negative effects might outweigh the obvious positives of eliminating the Stop Bag Day. HOWEVER, after reading through all these arguments and Jim's excellent paper, I'm feeling pretty well convinced that an elimination of SBD would be net positive for FRC.

That being said, it seems like a lot of the potential positives of #banthebag rely heavily on the well-resourced and experienced teams reaching out to the lower-resourced teams in their communities and making sure that all are able to fully realize the benefits of eliminating SBD. The good news is that FRC teams already have that mentality in place. Wouldn't it be great, though, to have a #banthebag activities guide to give folks a good baseline?

So, I'd like to take a moment to spur a brainstorming of what events/activities teams could host if SBD is no more. Here are things I've read so far:

- Scrimmages
- Bumper builds
- Pre-inspections
- In-season demos with competition machines to "Make it Loud"
- In-season workshops

If you're a team that's already working past SBD, surely not having your competition machine in a bag will free up some time and resources. How can you leverage those for your community?

-Andy

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I guess at the end of the day I find myself still incredibly puzzled by your plea to keep stop build day in place. You discuss how the potential removal of it could negatively affect your team. However, none of the issues you state are necessarily involuntarily out of your control as a mentor.

The current rules package for FRC robot fabrication causes my team, and many others, to have to adjust way out of our comfort zone to to meet everything from routine schedules up to overarching goals. Have to shut down fabrication for almost 1 out of 6 weeks during build season for midterm exams? "Sorry, that's out of your control as a team, but you have to work around it." We do. Live in a place where they shut down schools and virtually padlock the doors to keep you out over the threat of snow? "You'll come up with something! It's all part of THE PROCESS™." However, these problems are out of our control and as team leadership, we have made it a priority to not let problems out of our control define how we achieve success as an organization.

When it comes to potential removal of stop build day, your core fear seems to be that you and the rest of your team leadership will fail to adjust for, finalize, and maintain objectives and expectations that could affect the sustainability of your program. Does the mentorship of the team have no say in how often meetings are held? Do students hold your family members hostage with guns pointed to their heads until the student leadership feels like they have had sufficient meeting time?

No one on this board is going to make the decision to keep or end stop build day but each of us has the opportunity to set the guidelines for our teams concerning how we handle either approach.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Furthermore, he's on a team that competes in a district and thus enjoyed substantial unbagging time this season.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

And has made the argument that his kids end up working past SBD anyway. He only wants SBD so he can trick people into thinking that the season ends after 6 weeks.

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The average regional event (I cannot speak to district events) featuring a random sampling of 6 teams on the field varies between "unwatchably bad" to "struggles to complete the game objectives consistently", to "good". In no case would it be considered elite or even really good on average. The bar is currently set MUCH lower than it seems you consider it to be. That on field quality would be very bad if rules changed to make the robots actually be built in 6 weeks.

FIRST wants FRC to be the vehicle that leads to culture change. You cannot change the culture with a science fair. I don't think that can even be up for debate. It just won't happen. Competition is what makes this cool for kids that don't self select as science geeks. Competition is literally in the name, so clearly FIRST does think competition is crucial to achieving their goals.

Could you elaborate on what your competition season looks like? You are from Indiana and 868 seems to be an upper tier Indiana team. Are you not taking advantage of unbagging windows? Do you not plan any upgrades for your robot? Do you just unbag to practice/test software? Do you iterate on mechanisms? What are you working on (or not working on) each week between the last week of February and CMP?

Not trying to be obstinate, just trying to understand your very strong pro SBD stance while you currently exist in a district environment which is the closest thing we have to eliminating SBD.

Jim's paper had a very reasonable intermediate step of giving everyone FRC wide 8 hours a week (every week, not just weeks you're competing) unbag time. I've seen almost no discussion of this, just the posts about how the sky will fall if we eliminate SBD and the opposite posts that it's insane we continue to have SBD. This intermediate step is unbelievably easy to implement, saves those who need saving from themselves, and gives huge benefits to all teams at very little cost.

It would be SO much better than the current system for teams like us and teams who can't afford a practice robot. There are so many things teams like ours could do to help those with less resources if such a plan were implemented. We could host scrimmages, we could help teams fabricate upgrade parts, we could do pre-inspections and help teams correct issues with their robots in our shop with the benefit of all our raw materials, components, and tools. The list goes on and on.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

This is how your team runs during the build season. I know of teams who have daily or weekly requirements for participating on the team and how that impacts if they can attend events/travel but that doesn't apply to most teams.

Come up with a new solution for how your team views those six weeks? Take two or three days off in the first few weeks of build to properly digest the game and develop concepts offsite and remove "groupthink" which often hurts teams.

Advocating that no stop build day automatically increases or doubles your team's work hours is ridiculous. Only you have control over when you meet as a team and no one is forcing you to meet more or less.

If you don't want to get "burned out more" the solution is easy... don't. There were a few seasons I got severely burned out as a mentor along with the team. We made decisions as a team to reduce our hours and I learned too take it a step further by taking my own time off.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Did I not already address this?

[emphasis added]

I don't want a 12 week build season. Removing the stop build day automatically creates a 12 week build season. I want the FRC available to new or casual participants, and a 6 week build season makes it easier for new or casual participants to get involved.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

But...stop build day means nothing if you are allowed to have the robot out of the bag 24/7 after stop build day. I really don't get how you see that as a solution that's different than eliminating stop build day.

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I have found exactly the opposite to be true. Condensing the build into six weeks creates such an intense schedule that it is very difficult to convince the marginal mentors to dive in and participate. If we had the option of spreading the work out over a longer period of time we could create a more flexible schedule for those who aren't willing to completely devote their life to the team for six straight weeks.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

To be perfectly honest, having a completely arbitrary and meaningless day called "stop build day" that you're allowed to ignore one way or another might actually placate people on both sides of this one. People on teams that they want to make stop building can follow it and people who don't want to can choose to keep working. The official-ness of this arbitrary day lets everyone keep their favorite 6 week build season lie going if they want, and lets any individual team do what they want.

The issue is that it would be a meaningless term that would confuse less aware FRC teams who would think you would be required to totally stop working then. I would hope we could all move to a system where we don't have to do anything as silly and nonsensical as making a "stop build day" that means nothing, but come to think of it, it isn't substantially different than the current system other than avoiding resource duplication.

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Sorry, have to argue this one. We do Week 1 events and we barely have enough time to get our robot and our team prepared to the event. Some of us still have to fly to events, including our robot.
Normally our robot is shipped out either on the last day of build season or the next.

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Carmel High School has about 5200 students. Approximately 120-160 students will show up to the call out. We require students during build season to meet every day after school, meetings usually last 3 hours (last season MWF was 3:30-6:30PM, TTh 6:00-9:00PM, this is for the teacher that sponsors the team). Sometimes we will have meetings Saturday, late in the build season we may meet Sunday as well. These weekend meetings don't count for attendance.
We require attendance to let students miss school for competitions. You can understand what would happen if there was no time commitment required to be "on the team," especially with a school of that size.

After stop build day, student and mentor participation is reduced significantly, and those that do meet it's voluntary and not counted on attendance.

Managing a team our size is no small feat, and an official "SBD" makes the team draw down very easy. I understand and appreciate wanting to work on the robot during competition season, but without an official end of the build season would strain our mentors, particularly the teachers. It's not hard to imagine it's the same elsewhere.


I've posted 3 times on CD that I support this, and entirely separately (before all the discussion or Jim's white paper) I gave that as my feedback to FIRST.

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The thing people aren't getting is how you can't set this same schedule for yourself without it being mandatory for everyone.

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Oh, I'm not defending that as a viable option, at all - the logistical problems are likely insurmountable.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I appreciate the response, but I was hoping you could give some insight into what you're doing between the end of the 6 weeks and CMP. Are you saying you do not utilize unbagging windows prior to your events? You cease all robot related work?

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Sorry if I missed any previous explanations. I just read that 1 post and didnt see any indication of a previous one.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I feel like a broken record -
A 24/7 unbag time would be just fine by me. That would hypothetically work like this - On Stop Build Day, you must bag your robot. After Stop Build Day, you can only unbag your robot if you log your hours and activities.

The lead mentor that doesn't want to build past stop build day's "excuse" could be as simple as, "No because I don't want to fill out that paperwork, and the build season is over." Without a Stop Build Day, their "excuse" is "No because I don't want to." The outcome might be the same, but the perception is vastly different.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

It was intended to point out the difficulty of implementing any sort of effective and equitable policy to reduce work after bag day.

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Unbag time takes a few seconds to log/unlog and creates something that doesn't need to be there.

"We aren't having robotics today" is a perfectly fine reason for not working on a robot every anytime a student wants to.

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Why is this necessary? I don't think it's a big deal. When my mentor(s) tell me to not do something or that the team isn't doing something, I don't respond with "wow this mentor is awful" - I respect their decision.

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I believe we utilize the unbagging windows - the dedicated students and mentors. I wasn't there for it this year; my full time job took priority.

From where our robot ended at the end of build season to IRI, there was not much that changed (we ended up adding a mechanism to try and scale, but this definitely was an afterthought). Our biggest improvement came at the end of our first district event, when we were able to spend time dialing in our shooter.

Then look at it from a mentor's perspective. If I'm not here, the team can't work and I'm letting my team down.

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I am still on the fence about Stop Build Day. But I feel like I have to discuss one of the arguments against eliminating it. I believe the core of Efoote's argument is (and please correct me if I'm wrong):

Removing SBD will put undue pressure on teams who do not currently work past SBD. If it is removed, then (because "everyone else works up until competition") they will feel like they need to work up until competition in order to keep up.

Personally, I want to be a team that builds two robots or continues to work up until competition if SBD were removed. We don't currently, but I want to start taking this step so that we can be more successful. I can easily many lower resource teams seriously fearing that pressure to "extend their build season".

And yes, a team can choose to only work the 6 weeks and then stop until competition . . . but how many teams currently artificially limit their seasons like this? I'm sure there are a few, but I can't imagine more than a few limiting themselves to 6 weeks if SBD is removed. The work will expand to fill the time.

Removing SBD will mean less work for teams that build a second robot (they can focus their efforts on one robot if they want), but more work on lower resource teams who only build one robot.

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By not building two robots and working until competition, you're already not keeping up.

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I think it's a magnitude issue, not just keeping up or not keeping up.

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Not keeping up with who? Most teams at the regionals I've been to don't build two robots. Some do, but most (more than half) do not. My team has won in two separate years, as alliance captain, without ever building a second robot. Is winning a regional occasionally not keeping up?

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I'm having a tough time with this logic. If the teams who do not work past SBD are ok not working in the current system, where they can utilize withholding, unbags, or building additional robots - how does removing the stop bag put more pressure on them? Theyre already making a choice to not work on the robot through these avenues...

On your second point in red, think about it this way. If these teams already build two robots, they already have access to all the 'awesomeness' that comes from not working around a bag. Opening the rules makes this activity simply less wasteful. The teams that build just one robot would have to work less hard to achieve the same level of on-field performance than they currently do.

It's almost as if you're saying teams who WANT to have access to their robot outside of a bag (teams who build two robots) should have a handicap (build a second robot) so the rest of the competition who is content with their current performance doesn't have to feel bad about not working as hard.

-Brando

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There are different definitions on how individuals describe success. Regionals and districts are very dependent on other teams in the area and how they perform compared to other regions.

For example, if you go to a NorCal Regional there are lot of well performing teams there with tons of experience from their 2 robots, hence teams who do not build 2 robots are at a disadvantage and that is shown through rankings and who ends up winning events.

When you take a look at your regionals the caliber is much lower, hence game play is lower and one robot can make it to the top.

A great fair threshold is how these teams perform at champs and who ends up in the top of their division and on Einstein. A large majority of those teams build 2nd robots and do not "stop" their build season once 6 weeks are over. Iterative design is how you become the best.

So I'd have to agree with Adam. You are not keeping up if you want to be the best of the best at a worldwide scale unless you do not stop working until comp with 2 robots (or more).

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"Keeping up" is a relative term, best held in the eyes of the beholder. Building two robots to be a competitive program may be a requirement for some of the thousands of teams in areas that have events not in Minnesota. Maybe they want to be competitive on a level outside of their state? Maybe they define keeping up as consistently making it to eliminations? Maybe they define it as their mentors not needing to go on blood pressure medication mid season? I don't know, sounds like a good survey question.

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For the vast majority of FRC participants, being the best of the best at a worldwide scale is not in their vocabulary. Using the rationale of the very top echelon in terms of on-field success is not a representative sample for the FRC population as a whole. What it takes to "keep up" with these teams should not be a primary driving factor in determining what is the healthiest decision for the entire FRC team base.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

And that right there was my whole point. There are over 3000 teams in FIRST. Do we expect ALL of them to build two robots in order to try to "keep up" with, as you put it, the best of the best? You say a "fair" threshold is Einstein? That was only 32 teams this past year - the top 1% of FRC. I don't really call that a fair threshold of "keeping up". that's saying that 99% of teams failed to "keep up". What you're suggesting is essentially an arms race that would lead to every team trying to one-up each other every year, to put in more time and more effort than the previous year. I'm sorry, but that's not the FIRST I know, and it's not a FIRST that I really want to participate in.

Does anyone actually have any data that shows how many FRC teams build two robots currently? Or any data that breaks out every team's schedule before and after SBD? Because a lot of people are making statements that imply that they do.

I know a TON of teams that don't build second robots, and don't participate on CD, but are still very successful within their definition of success. But a lot of the posts on here, quite frankly, make it sound like people look down on those teams, see them as somehow less than other teams and needing a change in the rules in order to "improve" to where other teams are. Is it not enough to acknowledge that these teams are inspiring students, having fun, and leave it at that?

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"I advocate tightening the current stop-build restrictions because I don't want to see the total FRC program slide too far down the slippery slope of over-emphasizing the competition part of an otherwise well-rounded FRC program." See the next paragraph for an explanation of why I wrote this.

In this thread about a survey about Stop Build Day, I think it would be useful and interesting if each post (even those that are part of a multi-post exchange) began with a short sentence or phrase stating why the poster opposes/supports eliminating, weakening, loosening, tightening, keeping, strengthening (or is undecided about) the current stop build rules.

I think doing that would help sub-topic discussions from wandering too far afield and/or could help avoid people talking past each other.

And - What I think is more important, I think it might very helpful for the person who created the current survey, especially if they choose to create a follow-on survey.

I wrote my one-liner above.

Someone else might write one of these:

"I'm a proponent of weakening the current stop build restrictions because I think spreading the same work over a longer period will reduce mentor burn-out."

"I am a proponent of loosening stop-build restrictions because I think OPR will go up for teams at the bottom of the OPR scale, leading to increased retention of those teams."

Some people might just post a one-liner in order to remind readers about opinions they have already expressed in other discussions.

Blake

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Sigh

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Please refer to my verb usage.

In my world, FRC teams should strive to get all they can out of the program and to learn the most they can. What I have stressed on my own team and my own career is the importance of iterative design and never having a product just be good enough. Strive to create the best thing you can, and any great engineer knows you can always improve your product. That thought process is how you become an innovative individual.
Eliminating bag day will give more teams an opportunity to continuously improve and learn from that on a cheaper scale. Imagine how many teams could add more things with more time! They would learn so much more about engineering.

FRC is expensive. And learning more for a cheaper price than 2 robots for a majority of teams seems like something we should be striving for.

Thanks!

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This leads us right back to the conversation that was occurring regarding burnout and what it means to "keep up." Nobody doubts that having more time means teams will have the capability of doing more with their machines. What is in doubt is the other impacts of extending the official dates of build season. At the moment the discussion is specifically focusing on what pressures teams will feel to expand their work schedule to fill that new time, and the implicit impacts of that on student and mentor burnout. That ties directly into a number of other factors that have been discussed previously in other threads (student recruitment, student grades, mentor retention, team retention, etc). That's why I challenged your evaluation of using Einstein-caliber teams.

In short, few people are disputing that more time can mean you can do more with your machine. What people are disputing is what that time costs, and whether the standards of the teams that already work that time are truly a proper metric to compare the rest of the FRC population to.

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This is a really long post to tell people to keep posts short...

If this was strictly an "agree" or "disagree" topic then a multiple choice poll would have been sufficient, however there needs to be an opportunity for justification of everyone's point. A TLDR attitude prevents people from having their voices truly heard. Plus, adding a summary to a forum post only makes the post longer.

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The point I am getting at is teams have way more options on how they would like to construct their own build schedule without a SBD. So many programs like VEX, FTC, FLL, sports strive from this and can add so much more to the product.
If team's want to work more they can, if team's want to slow down they can, the possibilities are endless. Having a harsh deadline (especially a short 6 weeks) makes things harder in my world for both high performing teams and low performing teams. High performing teams want to be competitive so they must build 2+ robots to be the best of the best. Low performing teams have to stop working on their robot and can't add things, test, and more.

For Code Orange, we can't have 40 kids working on one robot, so we are going to build 3 to give our kids more opportunities to chase excellence. Many teams don't have that option, but eliminating a stop build day would give more kids the chance to work on features on the robot.

I helped start 2 rookie teams this year and both wanted to be competitive to ensure their sponsors stayed interested, kids were engaged, and parents would continue their support. So they both put in time to create 2nd robots. Both teams did exceptionally well (One even was #1 seed at SDR) and supporters raved and their program grew because of it.

Imagine how many more teams would get more support if they could show a little bit of a better product!

Kids get the most inspiration by seeing their hard work pay off. I've been on those low resource teams. We just want to have a bit more of a chance. Giving us more time would of helped with that!

The strive for excellence isn't something that "burns out all kids." What burns a lot of them out is wanting to be slightly competitive without enough funds or time to make a robot that works.

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It's not his fault people don't know that the earth is really flat and not actually round.

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I believe Issac Rife tried to collect this data a few years back.

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This is the post I believe you are referencing.

Issac might have more data now, not sure.

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I have seen a lot people say in this thread that eliminating SBD would eliminate the building of two robots. While mentoring FTC I saw a number of teams build 2 or 3 different robots over the course of a season. I knew for multiple teams their plan was to update their strategy based on the latest game play and design/build a new robot from scratch for each tournament. Whether that is good or bad I will leave for debate but I would be pretty surprised if FRC teams wouldn't follow suit if bag and tag was eliminated.

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This is what generally I've been thinking about.

Do Vex/Vex IQ students/teams struggle with burnout? Honest question here.

-Mike

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I have no statistics on this, but student/mentor burnout is still an issue for some VEX Robotics Competition teams.

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Mike,
last year we had 8 VEX/VEX MS/VEX IQ teams. Many of our teams built multiple robots throughout the season in hopes of improving their robots. More than half of them were completely different than their original designs at the start of the season which competed in at least 1 event.
Generally speaking, there was no student/mentor burnout. More than 1/2 of our High School students that do VEX also do FRC. Even with that, no burnout.

However, if we tried to do that for FRC, I would guess that student/mentor burnout would definitely take place. This is why I dont believe VEX is a good comparison with respect to building multiple robots for FRC with respect to resources, time spent, and the amount of energy needed.

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Having a school with students that do both makes you a good person to ask... what's the difference in person-hours/meeting hours between building one VEX robot and one FRC robot? when looking at burnout, measuring the difference in terms of number of hours probably makes a decent metric to compare two programs with.

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Our students spend roughly 3-4 hours per day for about a 6-week time period to build a VEX robot from scratch. Its much harder to determine subsequent designs, because after already competing at events and seeing youtube videos of other tournaments, they can get ideas of subsystems that can be replicated much easier than in FRC.
In FRC, we put in over 300+ hours for the average student in the 6+ week build season to build 1 robot.

Here's something that no one has really elaborated on yet. What about student/mentor talent?
IMO, elite teams will always be elite teams no matter what rules you change. They are good not because they build 2 robots and continually iterate as the main reason. Its plain and simple.....talent.
I was blown away to here recently that teams could put in less than 1/2 the amount of time and build world class, Einstein ready robots.
I dont think you can do that with all the resources in the world or a change in schedule, without first and foremost the talent and experience to do so.
In Jim Zondag's white paper, he specifically names some example elite teams. Change the rules and they will STILL be elite.