Need Help Teaching New Members
 

Hey guys,

I'm the head of hardware for Team 5052 this year, and we are a fourth year team. Most of the original first-year team members left last year, so I'm having trouble figuring out ways to teach the newer members. Our team size has grown significantly in the past year, and almost all
of the members in hardware have little to no experience. My goal is to prepare them before build season starts.

I have to teach around 20-25 people, but unfortunately our resources are very limited right now. We have a small amount of spare metal to work with, a drill press, a band saw, and several kits of VEX parts. We also have two test robots to teach electronics, and one of the classrooms at our school has a room full of computers with Autodesk Inventor. I want to be able to teach basic design, mechanical skills, CAD, and electronics, but I'm not quite sure where to start given the few resources we have. Any suggestions?

Thanks so much in advance.

Re: Need Help Teaching New Members
 

Our team has pretty much the same st up as yours. We take apart last years robot and then have them put the drive base back together. When we take the robot apart we leave the other subsystems in place (for example the intake/shooter). One the drive base in built, we have a crash course on electrical. Then the programmers deploy the code and we show them that it works. After that, we have them CAD the drive base and other miscellaneous items. We also take a few of our new members off to learn how to create bumpers.

Re: Need Help Teaching New Members
 

Another way to save money is to do some builds with lumber. It's not exactly the same experience, but you can teach the basic measuring, cutting, and fitting skills for less.

Re: Need Help Teaching New Members
 

1. How many people on the team have any experience to be able to assist you with teaching the new members?

2. My team has taken small groups of 4 people and had an experienced member teach them safety and how to use the equipment. We've sacrificed a few Vex parts and/or lumber for the purpose. Safety and use of equipment is far more important than building anything.

3. You sound like you want them to know how to do everything after this training. Remember how long it took for you to learn to do these things. It doesn't happen overnight.

4. Find out what people think they are interested in, then group them based on that info. They may find they love it or hate it and switch later.

5. Find out if there will be workshops in your area for the team to attend.

Good luck!

Re: Need Help Teaching New Members
 

The way are team works is for the first 8 weeks of preseason we have class on the key elements (machining, programming, PR, drawing, and basic tools). After that we do a mini competition to try and simulate the build season using mini robots. Here is a short explanation of the game.

Argos Stronghold is played by two alliances. Alliances compete against each other to breach their opponents’ defenses and capture their tower. They score points by scoring boulders in their opponents’ tower goals and surrounding their opponents’ tower.

basically last years game but simplified. If you want the full write up on the game or some of our power point/video for are training classes just send me a message

Re: Need Help Teaching New Members
 

As a sophomore team that doubled in size, we are in the same position. It’s hard to keep the attention of 10+ people at one time. We try to break out into groups of 4-6 so everyone gets to be hands on. Sometimes we pair up a senior member with a rookie member.

Pick a topic that you can demonstrate in about 45 minutes. Last night, we went through the 2016 pneumatic manual in the FIRST resources online. We worked on a piece of plywood and ‘built’ the system from there. It didn’t do anything but extend a piston, but the members were able to see all the parts being used and assemble them for themselves.

Another night, we took 45 minutes and went through the powerpoint in the FIRST resources on manipulators used in FIRST.

http://thinktank.wpi.edu/article/28

Lots of great photos and really easy to give, especially if you have experience in FRC, have a bot that used one of these strategies, have the materials around to mock up some of the ideas in the presentation.

Re: Need Help Teaching New Members
 

If you have the time to do it, I would recommend designing a mock competition scenario (you can always choose a past game) and have your students go through the whole "kick-off" process. For 1678, this entails:

1. Everyone reading the game manual and taking a "rules test" before being allowed to proceed with the brainstorming process.

2. A brainstorm of the "what?". This means deciding on a game strategy and coming up with what you want your robot to be able to do.

3. A full-team discussion of the "how". Here, we let each student (or group of two) present their design ideas of how to accomplish the tasks you decided on step 2. We give students graph paper and expect them to draw their designs approximately to scale. We then discuss the merits of the various ideas and make a short list of mechanisms that we want to prototype.

4. Prototyping all of the ideas that have merit from step 3. This is where you could really engage a lot of your students and, like a previous post mentioned, you can use all kinds of materials (wood, cardboard, pvc pipe, etc.)

We have found that going through this process at least once before build season can really help students prepare for the real thing.

Good luck.