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. :)