Re: Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?
 

Darn proud of it to say that I would lose to Paul and Ken but you know what the advantage is still mine. I am learning, they already know how to do it. woooo :)

Re: Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?
 

I understand where you're coming from. Nothing you learn can truly prepare you for everything that comes your way. One of our teachers (if you happen to read this, I apologize in advance) worked as an engineer for a very long time. It's my understanding that he was even a project manager for some time. I think he specialized in control systems. It is obvious that he has had plenty of experience and training. When it came to FIRST control systems, he didn't know how they worked. Hobby PWM is evidently not the same as traditional PWM. There were also a few other things that were new to him that I can't think of off the top of my head this late at night. The point is, however, that he still had the learn the system like everyone else. I, on the other hand, fresh out of high school, in my first semester of college, with "ENGR 10 - Introduction to Engineering" as the only engineering class under my belt, already understood a good deal of the system. I had been playing with hobby r/c equipment for some time. I had done some prior research on PICs. In general, I knew more about how to use the system than he did. (again, if you are reading this, i apologize and mean no offence...and yes, I may be slightly exaggerating)

As I pointed out in my previous post I don't completely agree with Oz's point of view on engineers' FIRST capabilities. My above statements are merely my interpretation of his opinion. Oz, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. I see where he is coming from and understand how he may have a valid argument. But, again, I don't fully agree.

Well then, to what extent do I agree with Oz? I agree that nothing can prepare you for every situation you find yourself in. Sometimes, you'll have to learn something new. But I don't agree that being an engineer is not an advantage. As JVN and a few others pointed out, the work done to receive an engineering degree is designed to teach you how to think like an engineer, not teach you every skill you will ever need. I wholly agree with this. It's not possible to learn everything. Instead, you learn how to learn what you will need later. (Something about teaching a man to capture aquatic wildlife rather than giving him food for today) To this extent being an engineer does give you an advantage. However, as I also pointed out in my previous post, this isn't necessarily a good thing. (By saying that, I don't mean that it's a bad thing.) Some of the greatest innovations are from people that looked outside of the box. Take Relativity for instance. That's so far out of the box that you can't even see the box if you're sitting next to Relativity. "Hey, look Bob! If I move at 0.99c, time slows down and I get shorter!" If you don't have any training, you can more easily think outsize the box; mainly because you don't know that the box exists. (Don't try to argue that Einstein had training, because that's not what I'm trying to say.)

I'm not saying that all of us engineers should go out and trade places with an artist to ensure that we won't have any training in our new fields. It's just that a lack of experience isn't always a bad thing. As long as you're not trying to disassemble a bomb, you shouldn't feel bad about not knowing what you're doing. I'm also not saying that we should abolish mentorship (is that the right word? actually, is that even a real word?) and let the students run free. My personal view on this whole thing is that mentors should be there to help, not lecture. If someone runs into trouble, they should have a place to go for advice, but not have someone force knowledge into their head or take over their project. I'm not completely sure, but I suspect that this is what Oz was trying to get at.

Re: Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?
 

Change that to "All the time" or "everyday" and you are close to what an engineer goes through each day. Force yourself now, today, to learn one new thing each day. When you lay down on your fluffy pillow at night, before you say your prayers, ask yourself if you have learned anything new. If the answer is "NO" then you better get up and find something. It is not the engineering that makes an Andy Baker, Paul C, Ken or JVN, it's the other knowledge too. If you ask a pointed question you will find that each mentor has found themselves a better engineer due to the constraints of this "game". I know that my coworkers wonder how I come up with some of the solutions I plan out. I know it is due to my involvement in FIRST.
As to engineers having an advantage in this robot competition, there is no doubt. We know it because of our experiences. You don't realize it yet, but you will. I can only ask that you open your minds a little and see things as they are. Step out of your body and come over to my side of the computer and see things from here. Yea, it's hard to do that, but give it a try. You have been doing hard things for a while, I challenge you to look at it from our point of view. Here is a little hint, each one of the engineers in this thread and most if not all of the engineers in this program want to teach you, help you and yes sometimes push you, to do your best. We are not going to be 100% successful getting you to be an engineer, but you you still have the potential to do great things. You have already taken the first few steps. With your eyes open, there are wonders to behold, keep them closed and all you will do is bump into walls.

Re: Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?
 

Is it just me, or did we recently take a sharp left into "Off-topic Land"? (No offense, they are excellent arguments, but I don't get the connection to Baker's original post, and if someone can explain it to me I would be happy to listen).

Baker, I think you have your answer already. Through the last few pages of conversation, it seems to be apparent that through this discussion people accept that although we may not completely agree on how teams should be run, there are a lot of different teams out there, and not one is better than the other because their methods (and thus, their priorities) are different. Many people made this point long before I ever thought of posting in here.

I was once asked what business model I thought FIRST was. In my opinion, it is two-fold: HQ in relationship to team leadership is a B2B (Business-to-Business). Just like your local coffee shop buys cups from a supplier, teams are paying for FIRST to give them a kit of parts and a means to inspire their local youth in a unique way (the competitions themselves).
However, team leadership to the students is a B2C (Business-to-Consumer). Just like you buy a cup of coffee from your local coffee shop, the team leadership is providing something to the student that the supplier can not do as effectively on its own - inspiring the student.
Back to the coffee shop example, there is no one way that selling coffee is fulfilling to the shop owner. You have establishments that thrive on product quality, some that focus on profit, others that make money off of ambiance, and even others that have a strong local following. All have different views of success. Similarly, you have teams that consider themselves successful that have varying student-mentor mixes.

So, what does that all mean?

Trust me, I would love to track team statistics to figure out the most effective mix of team aspects and encourage teams to adhere to said guidelines, because it may do a lot towards team retention. But that's not how FIRST works.
FIRST's competitive advantage to the rest of their industry segment is it's openness for innovative thought. FIRST isn't in the curriculum business - they're not promising in January that by May your students on the team will learn A B and C. FIRST is offering team leadership a chance to uniquely inspire their students to go into science or technology-based careers. How does that happen on a team level? It's up to the team leadership to think of the best way for that to happen in their area. And that's (one of the reasons) why FIRST is the Hardest Fun Ever, not only for the students, but for everyone involved.

Why do some teams feel strongly about one method over another? Conditioning. What they are exposed to goes a long way to shape their opinion on the matter. As it has also been shown here, as teams get older, people (and perceptions) change. Part of these changes are because of discussions that increase exposure...discussions just like this one.
All we can really do in terms of this discussion is keep talking about our different perspectives and celebrating that the differences still achieve the same goal.

Re: Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?
 

Actually your example is what i was trying to convey. Engineers are brilliant! They have to be! But brilliance sometimes doesn't compare to specific experience. All i want ed to say was that someone who has a good deal of experience in a field will probably be better at it than an unexperienced Engineer. I don't know what everyone else took it but that really is it.

So back to Mr. Baker's thread. I think teams will participate in robotics without technical mentors either because they don't have access to one or because they don't want one. I have not met a team that didn't want help from mentors so i assume most teams fit in the first category. Technically speaking you CAN build a robot without any mentor help (Its hard but the kits were made to be easy to some degree). I'm not saying they will have an amazing bot (though they could) but it can be done. If any team has enough interest in robotics to make a robot and compete without any technical mentors i say that they have some amazing devotion. I'm curious if anyone who actually knows some teams or on some with no technical mentors.

Re: Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?
 

I am part of a team that had no technical advisors for the first year. We completely designed and built OUR robot. We were proud of it and had no complaints and no regrets. We saw the competition as a learning experience, not Solely as a competition. I have found through my travels that the mentors are not just mentors. They help with the design, building, and troubleshooting of a robot. I saw one team whose robot had an electrical issue, and the mentors were the one fixing the robot, while the students were fooling around. I could say that that first year we were them ones fixing our robot when an error occurred, no matter what system it affected, in fact because we had designed our own system, the adults had no idea how to fix it. The FRC is a high school event, made to bring out new engineers and techs for today's world, not a place for ADULT engineers to duke out robots against each other.They are there only to help the teams out, not to completely design the robot which most of the time happens with a team that has technical advisors.

Re: Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?
 

I think you need a little more exposure to the entire FIRST community, if this is your impression of what happens most of the time.

Over the years I have noticed that rookie teams often fall into a pattern where the sponsor and mentors think FIRST is a robot competition - they think they have to build a really spiffy and competitive robot so the higher-ups in the company will not be embarrassed to have the corporate name on it

very often rookie teams will end up with an all-mentor designed and built robot. Then they get to their first FIRST regional, meet other teams, talk to other students and mentors, and somewhere over the 3 days it clicks

and then they 'get it'.

Getting back to the rest of your post: sometimes in our human experience there are things that we dont know, and we also dont know that we dont know - there are many things that are only learned as we bump along through life, through experience, then over the years we understand what it was that happened.

and heres the thing: no matter how intelligent you are, you cant forsee these things - you can possibly anticipate them - they come out of nowhere - you dont know that you dont know about these things

thats one of the real values of mentorship. Throughout most of human history young people learned by apprenticeship, working side by side with someone who had years of experience and training.

Re: Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?
 

There is definitely something to be said for the teams with students who know every in and out of their robot because they built it themselves. However, at the same time, I think they are cheating themselves out of the rewarding experience of working with real professionals.

Re: Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?
 

From the FIRST website...

The FIRST Robotics Competition is an exciting, multinational competition that teams professionals and young people to solve an engineering design problem in an intense and competitive way.

The program is not intended to be a high school event. It is intended to be a partnership between students and adults.

I had a college professor that once said there are three kinds of knowledge -

What you know
What you know you don't know
and
What you don't know you don't know

I think teams trying to work with no mentoring are in that third category and don't know what benefit they would receive from a good technical mentor.

**

FIRST is a great representation of many technical companies. Just like the FIRST plan of an engineer mentoring a student, we would never hand a new engineer a clean sheet of paper and say 'go design a new compressor, I will be back in a few weeks'. We would have that new engineer work with an experienced design engineer and learn what to do and how to do it. Corporate knowledge is passed on and the knowledge base continues to grow and that is how technical advancements continue.

Re: Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?
 

Chris, I agree with your post. However, there are other kinds of "Adult Mentors" besides technical ones. There have been many successful teams without engineers on board, and there are many many many people who mentor in this program who are not engineers. No team can be run without adults; high school students can not manage a team without credit and other things that adults take care of "behind the scenes".

I agree that engineers are a wonderful thing in this program, however, I personally feel that some of them do not know where to "draw the line" and let the students get involved. I speak from personal experience.

However, in the end, it doesn't really matter. I was able to be inspired from being on a team dominated by paid engineers, and my students are inspired on my team which has none. As it has been said countless times in this thread, please understand that teams run things differently for specific and very valid reasons. And, this is OK as long as the students are inspired.

I have a high respect for engineers in this program. Many of the people whom I work with would never be able to dedicate half the time that people like you do to this program. Thanks for keeping us inspired guys!

Re: Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?
 

The fact that thread is still raging speaks volumes. Obviously, there is a serious rift in the F.I.R.S.T. community. It seems (to me) to break down in to two real stances pragmatically, regardless of which of the (numerous) supporting rationales are being used:

1. It is acceptable and commendable for teams to feild a robot that is, in part or in whole, designed by non-student team members.
2. F.I.R.S.T. robots should be designed by students, with non-students in supporting roles that are not-directly involved in design.

Questions of manufacturing are a whole other debate (is buying sub-assembiles from AndyMark kosher?) and should remain seperate from this issue. In my view what it comes down to is the balance between "inspiration" and "recognition". So there are two questions here:

1. Does allowing engineers to design FIRST robots further the goal of inspiring students to pursue Math/Science/Engineering careers?
2. Does allowing engineers to design FIRST robots further the goal of recognizing student accomplishments in the engineering challenge that is FIRST?

I think the former question is debatable, students being corrected by engineers or observing the thought process of engineers as they engineer solutions to these (fairly easy) problems is arguably more or less inspiring then allowing students to do it alone (with engineers providing lessons at a higher level, or not at all). But I can see no argument in the latter question! How can you recognize students for the performance of a robot they were only paritally responsible for? It robs non-engineer teams of any sort of fair competition. How can I be expected to beat out a professional engineers robot (I still intend to, mind you ;))? Should a debatable vehicle for inspiration come at the price of recognition?

Working as an intern in what is now our primary sponsor has given me the chance to work closely with engineers, having my designs critiqued because I (as a mere high-school student) cannot be unsupervised in implementing production code. No doubt, this is a valuable experience. But working on my team, which has no engineering mentors, has been an equally valuable experience in an entirely different way. The team sinks or swims based on how well the students work together and know their stuff. I derive a great deal of pride whenever our team wins, because it really is us, the students, winning. Our (non-engineering) mentors are fantastic, plying us with sage wisdom and keeping us organized to some extent, but I'm glad it stops there. Our mentors are there to bounce ideas off of, not to dictate designs from on high.

Some have advocated that each team should be allowed to run things as they wish. I feel that sort of liberty should always be strived for. However the pro-engineer design teams limit the freedom of the opposing camp by altering the nature of the competition. You simply cannot have a fair competition of student wits with engineer designed robots on the feild. FIRST needs engineers, not engineer designed robots.

It's the nature of that partnership that is all important, and to my knowledge, unspecified by FIRST. If it is, I'd love to hear it, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for change. FIRST is it's participants, and should change as the people change.

Re: Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?
 

In My Opinion a team should be run by the students. The students should begin the design and the Mentors job should be to keep the students on the right path and provide ideas/suggestions when the students dont know what they should do. I as a student dont like to see a team that has had no help from there mentors or has no mentors to ask for help. What also bothers me is when it is the mentors that do everything and the students only know from what the mentors have told them about the robot.

Our team is a small one(20 something students getting near 30 now) with only 2 real mentors, as well as some parents that help out when we need them. I like our team the way that it is larger teams cause each student to have less and less to do, as it is during build season we always have at least 2 people sitting and doing nothing at any particular point in time.

Well I've said my piece but feel free to think what you want,
Cuog

Re: Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?
 

I guess I have to jump on this thread band wagon like everyone else even though it's a few months late but I guess I should at least voice my opinion.

First of all, everyone should just take deep breath and relax since some people seem to be too adamant about their views on this issue. Remember that most of us mentors here are volunteers and we're participating in this to help give back to our community while having FUN doing it! (If I didn't have fun or enjoy meeting all the FIRST participants do you think I'd be spending more time on this program than work and my family put togther?) Every team has their own way of making their team work due to different environments and resources. There is no one right way. Balance is the key based on what's available.

Second, Keep in mind the main point of FIRST and it's motto "to inspire" and "partner with professionals". As long as your team even achieves to inspire a single person into a technological field or not that's great! NOT you say! what the hell am I talking about? Well I for one believe life is one big decision making process and if I can inspire someone to become an engineer Awesome but if that person realizes that this is not for him/her that's great too. I want to give the students at least the choice prior to college to make that decision instead of wasting time and $$$ and then find out it was not for them and switch majors completely or not even go to college. FIRST is just another program to give students more experience to allow them to make the right decisions for themselves.

As for "partnerships", I can care less if it's with engineers from a high tech company or your local machine shop. They are professionals none-the-less. I would have killed to get this opportunity when I was in HS but I had to wait till I got to college to really find out, and I'm glad I actually love what I do as a mechanical engineer. It's another reason why internships in many careers are available. If I didn't intern at the Federal State Supreme court one summer for a judge I wouldn't have known how boring it really was to me. But at least I worked within the legal system and professionals to gain the experiece to make up my mind.

As far as who designs and builds the robot I say as long as the whole team is involved in the process it doesn't really matter. Our team motto includes that we are a "back to basics team". Out of the 14 years of doing this (7 years personally) we've always focused on "Fit Form & function" and the FIRST objective. As a team you have to choose what path you want to take based on the ever changing resources to reach your goals.

If all our students are able to take every responsibility from every mentor on the team and prove to be the driving force I'd welcome it whole heartedly. I wouldn't mind just showing up to meetings and just answering questions with my feet up on the table but that is not the case pending the type of students and their personalilties. We actively recruit students who we believe would receive the most benefit from this program. For example if someone is already set on a particular career path then they will not be ultimately benefited by this program.

Oh well I could babble on and on about this and the answer to the question of life, the universe and everything but I realized I've become too overly engrossed in this thread which I really shouldn't be.

Ellery

Re: Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?
 

he forgot two:

what you think you know, but you dont
what you think you dont know, but you actually do :^)

Re: Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?
 

There is also something that a student run team gets that heavily mentored teams will never have and will never understand.
I have been told, the best way to learn is to learn through mistakes.
the mentors that are active in the pits are depriving the students from the experience that is needed to be successful.

i will now make 2 killer analogies. Ready?

1. Besides Robotics my other life is what we call in our school sound and light(we are the people in the back of the theater balancing the Mic's and programing the lights) my "mentor" allows us (the students) to do the balancing of the Mic's so we develop the hearing that allows us to hear subtle rings in the voices before the audience does. This prepares us to be the mentors someday and be able to work without him guiding us every second.
which brings me to #2

2. When parents are raising a child or teachers teaching young students in preschool and kindergarten[or a councler at camp (in my case)] they allow the kids to explore their world and to figure out how to open doors and tie their shoes. If the teacher does not give them that freedom the child will become dependent on the teacher.

I hope you see the parallels.

Not only do engineer teams loose the trial/error aspect they most likely loose the pride i feel when i see our creation out there on the field.
everybody on the team knows how everything works and what it took to get it there in the first place. it's our "Blood Sweat and Tears" out there on the field.

I hope when we are done on this thread all teams will find a happy medium where the students do the building and have the mistakes that prepare them all while under the watchful and experienced mentor who wants the best learning experience for the students.

Re: Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?
 

Keep in mind that "sub-assemblies from AndyMark" could be replaced with "screws from Fastenal", "wheels from MSC" or "car jacks from your local junkyard". Why single out AndyMark, Inc.?

If all participating FIRST students were like you, Bjorn, then I would agree with your logic. You already "get" the fact that you need to further your education and you already know that you will end up in some sort of technical career when you enter the workplace. You probably score between 700 and 800 on the math portion of your SAT's. You have good work experience and are probably graduating high in your class. Colleges are lining up to recruit you to come study on their campus. Also, in order to build a competitive FIRST robot, you don't depend on any adult professionals. You really don't need FIRST to inspire you to become a technical whiz.

Believe it or not, many students are not like you. They actually need help to build a competitive robot. To many of them (and us adult mentors), this is a difficult design challenge. They need resources in fabrication, design, and team leadership. They don't have a dad who owns his own engineering firm. Some of these students don't even know what an engineer is. Their only heros are sports figures. For many, FIRST is introducing engineering to them for the first time. I estimate that most FIRST students fit into this category.

As quoted many time by the FIRST founders, FIRST is a partnership between students and adults. It is also defined here. The fact that you don't agree with this does not justify your demand that FIRST should change to meet your likes. This partnership and involvement from adult engineers is the foundation of FIRST. This is not a competition to only pit students' wits against each other. It never has been. If that is what you seek there are plenty of other great programs offered to satisfy your needs. I suggest you look into these programs instead of changing FIRST for your liking.


Andy B.

Re: Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?
 

Having a fully built student robot is very commendable in my opinion.
I personally would be happier with a robot that was built by the students at Wheeler High School and the help of the students at GT that didn't do so hot vs. a robot that was built by a set of engineers that did well.

Would I personally be inspired by engineers building my teams bot? Not really.

Would I be inspired by the fact that a group of students could put together a functioning robot. Yes. Maybe thats just me.

To me, as long as I am having fun, then everything is fine with me.

Re: Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?
 

Jordan,
I have said my piece earlier in this thread but I had to jump in and give a little bit more.
The best way to learn is not through mistakes. It is far better ( and more efficient) to learn through other's mistakes and that's what mentors are doing. They are providing the benefit of their experience and passing it on to the students. If you were to exist just on trial and error without any benefit of past experience you could "wander around in the desert" forever and never come up with the solution. Man has made it this far by not reinventing the wheel every time a new idea comes into his head.
On the subject of mic mixing and feedback prevention, a mentor who lets you "do it yourself" so that you can hear the subtleties leading to feedback has fallen far short of a very complex discussion on the subject. Things that affect feedback are not only mix related but include the acoustics of the hall, mic selection, room equalization and a little thing known as NOM. There are spaces in existence that can never be corrected and there are mic that can be used in a great acoustic space that cannot be "mixed" to sound good or guarantee no feedback. As a student of this art for a very long time, I can tell you that I am still learning as are most of my peers, because sound science is still in it's infancy.
Finally, all teams take pride in their robot, but it is easy to become down heartened when you think you have done everything correctly and the robot still does not act or react as you think. Over the years, many teams without engineer mentors have asked for my help at competitions. They did have most of the problems solved but missed one or two minor points in design or implementation. Oh, if an engineer had just spent one or two hours with that team before competition, their experience could have been more positive. (for instance, when the FIRST tranny came out, it was very sensitive to friction caused by misalignment of gears and shafts) This advice did not need to come from an engineer, just someone with the experience to identify the problem.

Re: Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?
 

A couple of years ago, a sophomore team in our area was having a problem building their robot. They put out a call for help here on CD. After several e-mails back and forth over a period of several days, I was still unable to visualize the problem and they still had not solved it. So I arranged to go out to their shop to actually see what the problem was and what their resources were.

Within ten minutes of my arrival, we had used equipment they had in a way they hadn't thought of to accomplish the solution. I spent another hour or so there and helped them with two or three more minor issues, mostly because it was an hour each way and I really didn't feel like getting back in the car yet.

If I hadn't helped them they would have been dead in the water. No progress had been made for several days while they tried to work out this problem. Some how at that point I don't think they needed to spend anymore trial and error time. They did have an alternate solution, which probably would have rendered CNC'd parts useless. I'll bet they wouldn't have forgotten that lesson either ...

BTW they won the Xerox award for their robot at our regional. Somehow I don't think the aid I rendered made it any less their robot.

Re: Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?
 

Your point is well taken and you have said more or less what i was alluding to in the usefulness of an experienced mentor.
I don't believe you need to make the mistakes for yourself i mean more along the lines of a mentor being responsible enough to tell why something does not work and what will go wrong to make sure the student understands the inner workings.

It is ludicrous to reinvent the wheel when the wheel is made :yikes: but when inventing a new wheel it is better to do it with the experience of your peers and mentors

I have a larger problem when a team talks about sending the gearboxes to be professionally machined

It is nice to see a fellow Sound Technician here. You got me wrong in my explanation of how he teaches us. He is a physics teacher and spares no gruesome detail in explaining what sound is and what effects it(hall, Mic, and room equalization) we do talk about what could cause a problem like the hiss of a bad cable or a bad Mic or the Tin Can syndrome as we call it. I just did not feel the need to go into the technical aspects of it but it is true you can never finish learning.

Re: Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?
 

People should listen to this Andy Baker character, he seems like a smart guy...

Andy has hit the nail firmly on the head. When I look at these forums, I see some the best and brightest high school students from across North America. As Andy stated, students like Bjorn are near the tops of their classes and already on the fast track to higher education. These students are not a random sample of FIRST. The problem in North America today that FIRST is trying to solve, is that kids don't see the value in becoming an engineer. They don't look up to engineers as role models, it's just another boring career. FIRST was created to change these attitudes, and create a culture where engineers and scientists are valued, and treated like role models. That why this competition was conceived the way it was. By bringing adult engineers into High Schools, kids are able to be inspired by the work that these men and women do. Students who normally wouldn't give engineering a second thought, are now seeing engineers in action. Suddenly, they think to themselves, "Hey that's cool. Maybe I want to do that. Maybe I should take pre calc..."

If you don't have adult technical mentors, this inspiration process can't happen. Dean's said it before, and it's been repeated many times, but it clearly hasn't sunk in yet, so I'll say really loudly.

FIRST is not a science fair!

The FRC is not about determining which high school as the smartest aspiring engineers. Yes, it's not fair to have a bunch high school students on one team competing against a bunch of professional engineers. Clearly the team of professionals is at an advantage. But, it would be silly to exclude them, because they're directly addressing the mission of FIRST, and helping to achieve the desired culture change.

For all those students on teams who have voluntarily given up adult technical support, just remember that not all high school students know much about engineering. In fact, most don't even care about it. Just because you've already been hooked, doesn't mean that everyone else has. Just because you're ready to build a competitive robot on your own, doesn't mean that every other High Schooler is. These kids need to be wowed and inspired, and that's what the adults in FIRST are trying to do. To try and eliminate engineer led teams just so you can have a "fair student competition" is completely selfish. As Andy stated, if that's what you're looking for there are many other competitions out there for you.

I've seen many student only teams do very well over the years. It's not impossible. These teams are a welcome part of FIRST. Each team needs to be tailored to needs, wants and abilities of their students. Just remember just because one shoe fits you, doesn't mean it's going to fit everyone else. And trying to get everyone to wear the same sized shoe in the interest of fairness, is quite frankly, silly.

Re: Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?
 

I am open for discussion on this subject anytime. What is it that you call the tin can syndrome?

Re: Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?
 

I feel that issues such as this aren't a problem. If you really consider it, buying stock parts or having other people machine your parts are simply a matter of economics. The teams simply made a decision that to pay for the cost of professional, precision machining would be worth the time and design effort they would save. Is it unfair? Not at all. If they have machining time donated, that should appear on their BOM. Thus, they take a significant (because machining costs are not small at all) portion of their robot cost budget in order to get the precision that they need/want for the design. Anyone can get stuff machined, (especially since the advent of cool sites like emachineshop.com) and it will roughly cost the same amount on the BOM. Buying stock parts and systems is the same kind of issue.

There are many types of mechanical design--selection design, when you look for pre-made or pre-fabricated parts to accomplish things so you won't have to design your own--is an incredibly important one. To deny that it exists is entirely unrealistic, and a team that buys a pre-made assembly and adapts it to their robot has succeeded in design. In certain circumstances, it may even be a wiser decision in terms of effort. If we had bought pre-made gearboxes last year it would have saved us three weeks of design and hundreds of man-hours and dozens of headaches, and had that manpower been focused instead on our arm and manipulator systems, we could have done better.

The point is that although it means you might do less work to design and manufacture parts, using pre-existing services and products is intelligent and a large facet of modern engineering and design.

Now, this ties into the larger issue. When there are teams that are all students and they build a robot, that's alright, fine. But with good engineering mentors and teamwork, they could be more inspirational. Proper selection design is simple and elegant, and in my mind, inspiring. I'm sure all of us who have been to competitions have been awestruck or at least wow-ed by some use of a product that we've never seen before, for example, Team 71's use of file cards to creep along the carpet, unstoppable in 2002. Sure, that's more creative than most such uses, but the point is that buying and using premade parts and adapting them to robots is a critical part of FIRST and engineering in general.

I was once in a computer lab in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Purdue, and I overheard a conversation in which one student was proposing to make a spacer by ordering a piece of stock and sitting at the lathe for several hours to make it the correctly. Had this guy the experience to know, then he would have just ordered the same part off of McMaster-Carr and would have perhaps had to spend 10 minutes on the lathe. Someone in his group, who I knew, and had done FIRST before, directed the guy to the McMaster-Carr website, and the guy was like, "Ohh..."

For me, at least, those "Ohh..." moments are often the most inspiring in my life. I used to be a student and now I'm a mentor, so I've seen both sides of the coin. I used to feel (when I was a student) that I should be doing a lot more of the work, that the mentors should be doing less. But when you work with engineering mentors, that "Ohh..." thing happens a lot. And you learn that trial and error methods are time-intensive and there are ways to do component design and selection that minimize weight and optimize design while still having the same functions, and that one of the few ways to learn those ways are through an engineering education and background.

And then you realize...
If you hadn't been working ALONGSIDE those engineers...you'd never have that other person to say, "Well, why don't you do this, so that it works?"

And you'd never have been able to say "Ohh..."

Re: Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?
 

I agree that it is very beneficial to the competition to utilize the skill of professionals to machine parts for the robot. But all the headaches was hopefully well worth it because the students gained valuable first hand experience in the manufacture of such parts. Now they have encountered the inherent problems with each design and when the time comes for them to join the engineering community they will have the benefit of experience rather than going at it cold in the professional world.

If a professional comes to where ever your team works or you take a sort of field trip to the professional to be taught then you are getting the "Ohh..." factor as you so well put.
On the other hand if the design is made by the students with mentors then their design is sent to be created that is good too as long as the students see what makes a working part.

As i said before a desirable relationship must be found where the students and mentors have a chance to voice there opinions on design and on fabrication. So the students learn why their ideas may or may not work.

O ya, The tin can syndrome is a nickname the teacher gave the actors voices during Mic. check one day when they sounded very metallic. (sounded Mic.ed)
we have since adopted it for regular use whenever the voices sound like that. It's kinda a running joke, like when the actor is saying his lines and we modify the lines to make the daunting task of balancing the EQ more light hearted. Like say the line was a preacher during his sermon "And the lord said why..." we would change the line to "And the lord said why... do i sound like i am in a tin can!"
You might need to be there... it was the best example i can think of a the moment, but there are better ones.

Re: Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?
 

[quote=Arefin Bari]Very good thread Andy...

When someone tells me the word "mentor" I think of someone who will be there to teach me, and then watch over my shoulder when I am building cool things. If it is not possible for me to design or machine a part, or code certain section, then the mentor take over and solve the problems. I have seen many teams work like that. The students love it, because they get the best out of the program...............


QUOTE]

What Arefin wrote in quite true.....students will learn a lot if the mentors let the students do the work first...then offer advice or help...... I know this thread is about technical mentors...but what we need to acknowlege is .....without school board personnel supporting the team....nothing happens too.....many times...we hear of a team dissolving because they cannot find a teacher or any school board personnel to mentor the team.....even if they build a robot.....they cannot travel to any competition....to combat this...is to do Dean's homework....spread the word of FIRST..... :) there is a chat scheduled to talk to educators on Tapped In.....believe it or not....not too many of my colleagues are aware of FIRST and what it is all about....I know ...because of my children's involvement....otherwise...I would be clueless too.....we have a thread about the chat.....it will be on 12/6...7-9 PM EST....http://tappedin.org/tappedin/ ......on the K-12 Campus....Robotics (K-12) chat room...you have to register...guests are not allowed on the K-12 Campus.....email me if you have any questions.

Re: Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?
 

I must disagree with many of you. In manyt ways I think what makes some of the FIRST designs really great is that the students do not know enough to know the "right" way to do things. Instead of having been told what years of education can teach, we get to really experiment with things, sure, it may not be economical or efficient, but the time for that is later. Now, students get a chance to just get their hands a bit dirty. That is also why I am against identical designs which get used year after year. To me these are just the same as if a mentor did all of the designing. Even if the designs were originally students', after a couple of years the new stuents are robbed of the experience of seeing their own designs to reality.

In many ways FIRST is about re-inventing the wheel -- or at least re-making it.

Re: Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?
 

It would be a deceit of omission to let that slide. Sadly, none of the above assertions are true.

I understand your argument Mr. Baker, and I've read quite a bit of what The Denim Clad One has put forth, but I still can't bring myself to embrace that viewpoint totally. There must be a middle-ground here, but I don't know what it is yet.

Re: Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?
 

With your ability to string words together so eloquently, the way you have several times in this thread, I would think that you are not giving yourself enough credit. Your posts reflect the intelligence of someone far beyond your years, and yet you claim that you have difficulty grasping this concept.

Let me help explain what you and I didn’t get in High School, and what I now understand about this program. It is one thing to be a student on a team, and an entirely different thing to be a mentor. From the posts you have made in other threads, it is blatantly obvious that you have utilized experience with computers and programming in your FIRST and personal life experiences. Where, may I ask, did this come from?

Whether it was from this program or not, both situations point to the same thing; FIRST works. For some reason or another, you have learned something on your team, or expanded on what you already knew. This not only makes you want to do and know more, it excites the people around you.

Imagine, if you would, being a mentor on a team instead of a student. Now, your priority is to engage your students both mentally and mechanically to get them excited. On my team, this means being fairly hands-off and letting the students design and manufacture everything. Knowledge, however, does not come from nowhere. Someone has to show you how to do something, directly or indirectly.

How did you learn to program? Did you have someone over your shoulder showing you how to write code? Or, did you get a tutorial online or a book from a store? One way or another, you learn by example and demonstration. You can not simply “get” something like programming; there is inherent information that you need to know before you can learn. This is similar to mechanical aspects as well; if you have never learned how to use a screwdriver, you may waste a good amount of time trying to figure out how it works, but having someone over your shoulder to demonstrate and show you how to use it makes things go a lot easier.

Continuing with the screwdriver example, arguably some people will remind me that a fairly intelligent person can figure out how to use one in a certain amount of time. I would insist, however, that this wasted time is not necessary, as the ultimate goal is to teach someone how to use a screwdriver. What does it matter where you learned it from? Be it a book, tutorial, random experimentation, or someone using one alongside you.

However, there are certain things that are next to impossible to learn with experimentation alone. Try learning to use CNC mills or 3ds max without any help files, tutorials, or guidance at all. See how long it takes you to learn how to master them.

Al that being said, there is much disagreement about the role of an engineer on a team. Many people do not see eye-to-eye on this, because some things work for some teams, but would rip others apart. I agree with you, 100% that direct student involvement is vital to inspiration in this program. However, consider for a minute this example:

Imagine a team who has been around for over 10 years in this program, with a group of engineers form a successful corporation who are dedicated to making the team great. This team has been a national champion, a Chairman’s winner, and is arguably one of the best teams around. Now, picture a new student who has joined this team, as a freshman. The mechanics of the team allow for minimal involvement of the students in the design and build process, and even less for an inexperienced freshman. The corporation whom the team belongs to likes seeing winning trophies in their display case, and having their company’s name in the papers. The student goes through the season without ever picking up a screwdriver, but watches the engineers with a hunger to learn. He does not ever get to touch or drive the robot, but goes home and learns about other ways he can grow on this interest. He loves being a part of a team who wins, and loves being able to be proud of the robot’s performance, even if he does not get to work on it. The team wins many awards that season, and the student asks his parents for a VEX kit for his birthday. He learns how to use it over the summer and learns more about design and mechanics that he observed from the engineers the previous season. The next season, he observes more and more, and then decides to pursue this stuff as a career.

I’m going to stop there and explain a little bit. I don’t like that situation at all, not one bit, but it has happened exactly as I painted it. The fact of the matter is that a successful robot can inspire a student just as much as one that he built himself without help. I have seen, from personal experience, students on such teams get more inspired and motivated than some of the most technical students in this program. In my personal opinion, engaging the students technically makes the inspiration process work a bit better for those who may not have any interest in the technical aspects of a team. Nevertheless, teams with and without engineers continue to produce excellent students into the corporate world.

You seek a middle ground, but why does it have to be a war? You may not see this now, but I guarantee you will a few years after you graduate and get a job with a company; it does not matter how much you got to touch the robot, it does not matter who built the robot or designed it or wired it, it does not matter how many awards you won or how many times your robot lost a match. None of this matters as long as you are still inspired.

The fact that you continue to peruse these forums and post shows me that you are inspired. You may not know how it happened, and might disagree with the methods that your team’s mentors used; but it happened nevertheless, and you are now someone’s success story, and have made Mr. Kamen proud. You may not like his viewpoints, and may not like what has happened in your FIRST carrer, but you have defineately been inspired, and that's all Mr. Kamen really wants of you. :)