How involved are your mentors?
 

My team's mentors try to stay back and help only when asked because they want us to get the most out of the FIRST experience. What about your team?

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

Our team's mentors play a large part in the design and fabrication of the robot because they want the students to learn from good leadership and get the most out of the FIRST experience.

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

Our mentors suggest ideas and prototype alongside us but the actual robot is basically student designed and built.

However the trend is slightly toward increased mentor involvement as there's a lot we could learn from them that we don't take advantage of as much.

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

Our team is run 50/50 with mentors and students working hand in hand on ALL aspects of the season. We've found when students get to work as peers with "real" engineers, magic happens. This really allows our students to get the most out of the FIRST experience.

-John

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

If students and mentors don't work side by side, how will the students gain enough knowledge to even know when to ask for help?

I suggest you take a roadtrip and visit a couple of teams in your area named Wildstang and Winnovation. They will have lots of suggestions about getting the most out of your FIRST experience.

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

John is my hero for so many reasons, most of which are summarized by this short and sweet post. John knows what I mean.

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

How involved ?

It depends on 'when'.

When we go to our 1st regional competition I like to be at about '2 tau' here

That would be about 13.5 %.

If we make it to the Championship I want to be at about '3 tau'.

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

I'm going to be the second to quote John in this thread, because he sums it up so well.

Personally, I prefer to build parts that the students designed, than to have them build parts the engineers designed. However, what happens is that the students develop the design concept with assistance from the engineers, and then the engineers work with them to make make it something that can be built, so they can learn that important piece of the puzzle. And then, because none of the 4 high schools represented on our team teach shop classes anymore, the engineers work with the students to teach them fabrication techniques and the importance of taking pride in their work. Then we all work together to get it done and in the crate.

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

Students make all decisions by consensus. They decide on strategy and brainstorm ideas for robot. Occasionally mentors will give ideas during this process if students have not thought about something that may be important but students make all final decisions. One of the fun parts of the season is when they all bring in mock ups of their ideas made from various materials or on CAD. In most situations they will come up with 2-3 winning ideas that we will see other teams develop. The gotcha moment every year is when a student turns to the mentors and says: " this is possible right?". The learning about engineering principles and the math and science behind the robot starts here.

Students build and/or fabricate about 90% of the robot parts. We do not have a machine shop so we always look at what can be made from ITEM, kit of parts or bought off the shelf. Occasionally we need help with a sponsor/mentor who needs to fabricate a part that the kids design. We are fortunate that we have a 3D printer and students design and install parts that they created on the 3D printer. Student do all the building, rebuilding and rebuilding again. Mentors are there to assist and help but kids have tools in their hands almost all of the time.

You will never see a mentor in our pit working on the robot with a toll in their hand. By then, the kids can almost tear that robot apart with their eyes closed. You'll see mentors observing and giving guidance if needed but kids do all the work.

Mentors go through and show students the calculations of how and why things should work. Students need occasional help with learning how the CAD parts should be made. They learn about strength of materials, gear ratios, rpm calculations, center of gravity, MOI, centriods, ohms law, etc. etc. etc.

This year we had another one of those great moments after our first event. Students saw how well vacuums worked and wanted to investigate if we could do it. A mentor brought in his hand held vacuum cleaner and we saw it had the power needed. The team tore it down saw how the impeller worked and reverse engineered that impeller on CAD and then they made the part on the 3D printer. The student excitement was awesome when it worked. The CAD team went on to make the shroud (casing around the impeller and tested various KOP motors and funnels. You should be able to see our vacuum on our robot next week at 10,000 Lakes.

It has been said in another thread but just going through the above process has made our students winners. They're proud and we are proud of them.

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

Another requote of this.

(Sorry for the long post)

My high school's team (23) was run this way. Our mentors would split into 2 or 3 groups with the top ideas from the student brainstorming (chosen by the students) and they would start doing the math and building prototypes. Showing the students the process of design is really important. We would bring our prototypes up to the "Driving by RC" stage wherever possible, then whichever one seemed to be working better would be chosen. We often didn't settle on a design until sometime week 3, but all the major dimensions and materials would have been figured out and tested by then.

My senior year, we were at the wiring stage, and one of the mentors sat down with me, wire strippers, and a crimper, and said "tell me what you want me to do". I was the only student interested in electronics that year, and we didn't have an electrical mentor, so he couldn't help design anything, but he could assemble anything I asked for (to leave me free for programming). I would have enjoyed helping route wires that year, but we simply didn't have time.

I have worked with mentors since then that are the "hands off, let them ask questions" type, which would keep themselves amused with non-robotics work while waiting to be asked a question. The students never wanted to interrupt what they were doing, so they never asked those questions.

I also agree with GaryVoshol. The students need to see the process to ask questions about it. My favorite question as a mentor is "why can't/don't we X?". That's the perfect time to learn what the student is thinking, and take a 10 minute diversion into the math about how the new system would work, compare it to the old, them let them help decide if we should change plans.

Towards the end of the season (when everything is behind schedule), I like to make a list of what all the students are working on, then suggest to them the items that are not strictly needed, but have become a "nice to have" to help them prioritize the remaining build time. (Things like wheel encoders and accelerometers, which are helpful for a better autonomous, but won't help the robot drive when it doesn't have the rest of the drive code yet)

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

We have mentors that are very involved working hand-by-hand with the students in all aspects of the team. We have a general rule that the students own the decisions. When there are choices to be made and sometimes the students react, "I don't care", then our mentors go on strike until such time that the students get to the point of stepping up to own the decisions. Some would think, it would be more efficient sometimes for completing the actual end product if the mentors didn't go on strike- but that is only if you think that the end product is the robot- it's not.

Students typically come in with a lack of experience that usually make them overly optimistic about how little work that they need to do to be competitive. They are usually less than impressed with being told there is significant value in studying what others have tried before them.
Design engineers from technical industries know better.

Being able to be creative AFTER you study what others have done is much harder than being creative without studying anything- but that is typically exactly what it takes to be competitive.
One of the key mentors roles is to open up the students eyes to this in a manner that is not demoralizing.

Instilling these concepts into students takes much energy by both the mentors and the students- but it is highly rewarding to both even if you do not win championships.

But I'm still relatively a newbie to FIRST.
I think a substantial difference between FIRST and other programs is to have students recognize the value of experience of the mentors in a manner that they are not intimidated by it but use it to grow their own capability and confidence. Students have to give up their free time to become capable of making persuasive arguments not only to their peers but to their mentors. Mentors have to control their passion to "be right" and allow the students to truly own the decisions.

The process is never perfect. The dynamics are very active -but the key is it's not really about the robot at all- the robot is just a prop.

There is also healthy contention between mentors. When is the right time of build season to stop working on new ideas and prototypes? Some say week 3: I say probably January 1st of the following year. ;)
Students get to see how mentors negotiate with each other and with students. They are very enlightening lessons.

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

This is such a wonderfully wise statement.

Jane

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

We're in our fourth year, and every year it's been different. Part of that is the impact returning members can have on a team - when you have returning members that already know how to build a robot, they can work a lot more autonomously than a student who doesn't know what a wrench is. But most of it, i think, is the evolution of the mentors understanding of how to work with the team.

In our first year, no one knew what we were getting into (yeah, i know... that's everyone's story). As a result, the robot ended up being mostly mentor designed and, since our only equipment were easy to use hand tools, built with a good combination of student and mentor input.

In our second and third years, we tried to get the students more into the design process, which was good, but unfortunately we started to move away from too much student work - a lot of items were prepared by the machine shop at work, and later welded together by mentors. The students did get to do a lot of prototyping and design work, however.

This year, i think we hit the best balance we've ever had, and it came from (mostly) a 50/50 approach. After the initial big-group design meeting, students divided up between the subsystems (drive train, kicker, and lifter), and we had one dedicated mentor to each. They all then worked together in developing ideas, prototyping, and building. One of the best parts about this robot, in the mentors opinion, is the complete and total lack of welding. Everything on the competition robot was constructed from stock materials at the workspace with student involvement. The only off-site machining we did was for some custom made mecanum wheels, which really would have been impossible to machine at the workspace.

IMO, the best a team can do is blur the line between mentors and students, and work together side by side to build the robot.

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

Ever since we started three years ago, our mentors have been there to guide us. They stay back until we have a question, and most of the time they ask us to attempt solving a problem before giving us the answer. At other times, they step in to point out how we could make things easier for ourselves. It is their way of getting us to think about what we are doing.

This method has worked for our team and is the style that, as a senior, I am planning on adopting when I mentor next year.

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

We pretty much just work together as a team.

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

Exactly.

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

Yep, that's how we do it too.

FIRST seems to approve of it, based on who has won the Chairman's Award.

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

I cannot begin to explain how much mentors building the bot disgusts me. This competition is about the students, not about the robots. The amount of knowledge that is imparted by students building and designing the robot is immense, and every time that a mentor helps with the bot is an opportunity to learn lost. I have talked to teams a regionals where they didn't even know how their robot worked, much less how to go about designing it. We have built our robot with hands off mentors for three years now, and I have learned the value of seeing the mentors as a extremely valuable resource, not just another team member.

I see the value of the 50/50 argument, but I believe that in reality it leans more towards 60/40, 70/30 in reality with the students doing less and less work with the mentors solving the problems when the kids get stuck on a problem.

If the students can't build a robot like this I have little respect for your team. I admire the hard work and long hours many teams put into their robots, and when I compare student built robots to mentor built ones I find mentor bots to be extremely lacking, despite their fluid design and effectiveness.

Well I've be rude, watch the flame wars begin.

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

I'll say it again... some of the most incredible learning opportunities come from mentors and students working side by side.

What exactly are you basing this belief on? Have you spent a lot of time on other teams? Come by the 148 pit and our students can tell you about their experiences.

Why would anyone flame you?

I don't care one iota how you run your team. The only thing I don't like is when people talk about how "disgusted" they are about how I run mine. Your disgust stems from ignorance, imho.

I summarized your post in my head as "You're wrong, I'm right, and I don't believe your teams work like you say they do." That doesn't make me angry, just sad.

If you genuinely want to learn about how this stuff works for us, come by the 148 pit (or the 217 pit, or the 1114 pit, etc, etc) and talk to the students. If you don't care to learn, your ignorance isn't really hurting me any.

I'm really sick of my students hearing how disgusted some people are with our team's model and that they "don't do anything" and they should be ashamed that mentors work with them on the robot. It is getting very, very old.

-John

PS - I've yet to see a member of a 50/50 team come on Chief Delphi and talk about how disgusted they are with the all student built robot. Live and let live? No?

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

I'd have said much the same thing, but one one fewer word: every time that a mentor helps with the 'bot is an opportunity to learn.

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

I have been a student on a team where the engineers built the robot behind closed doors, and the students saw it 6 weeks later.

I have been on a team where the students did 100% of the work.

I have been on a team where students work with college mentors.

And, I have been on a team where students work together with mentors, and put out a pretty decent robot because of it.

In my opinion, the last option is far and away the best. Not to sound like a broken record, but if you don't think so please take the time to stop by the pits of teams like 148, 217, 45, 1114, 254, 118, 111, 71, and 78. All of these teams run on similar mentor/student engagement models, and churn out some of the best students AND robots every year. They have to be doing something right.

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

The competition is not about the students. The competition isn't to find the smartest or hardest working team of students in the US. This is not a "high school robotics competition" in the sense that you're trying to find out whose high school students are the best engineers. Try and find a bit of FIRST press that says otherwise.

I guess the only reason I help with 2791 is to steal opportunities from my students. I guess I should quit this FIRST thing then... I mean, if I do anything on the team, I'm taking away opportunities, so FIRST I guess shouldn't have mentors then.

Have you ever been on a 50/50 team? How would you know, or have the slightest idea, whether or not this is the case?

Every 90+% mentor robot I've ever seen in FIRST is a piece of crap. The teams that know how to build good robots are the same teams that know how to build good teams, and they engage the students every step of the way.

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

I'm just curious how you could tell, by looking at the robot, how much of it was built by mentors. The bit about fluid design and effectiveness almost seems to imply that these are signals of mentor involvement. I find it hard to believe that student built robots or 50/50 robots wouldn't be able to meet this standard.

I disagree. Mentors are teachers. Some of them have been doing work in engineering since before any of the students were born. They know more about the engineering process than the students. That's just a simple fact. I usually see mentor assistance as lessons via example, demonstrations you might call them. These are experiences to learn from, not to frown about.

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

On our team, the students do a large majority of the work. We design the robot, we make our own prototypes, and we build our final product. Mentors keep the team in order, help when help is needed/necessary, and teach us the right way if we did something wrong in order to better ourselves. That's the general gist of 1676.

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

Mission

Our mission is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership.

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

Mentor involvement varies on our team based on groups.

I can't really give a super accurate measure of all the groups; but Design, my area, is pretty close to 60/40 (mentor - students). This year, after prototyping, the build mentors would ask for certain parts. Our job ended up CADing up said parts and then working with those mentors to not only deal with issues that would pop up, but more importantly to learn from them why they requested certain features in the part. Thus they pass on their knowledge of physics and fabrication, and we get the satisfaction of a totally student CADed robot. Worked well.

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

"I cannot begin to explain how much mentors building the bot disgusts me. "

I think such a sentiment is real for some. It would be interesting to explore actually why.

Does a novice student have a better experience if they only work side-by-side with expert students and not expert mentors?

I think expert students get a dramatic ego boost out of FIRST. The question is: does that ego boost go up or go down if mentors are added side-by-side to the mix of expert and novice students?

Some teams do not have students that have been building items long before they joined FIRST. Some teams have exceptional students that have been fabricating mechanical and computer marvels since grade school. When mentors are side-by-side with these exceptional students, these students are no longer just comparing themselves to other students- they are being stretched to consider their work to experienced engineers. They are getting an understanding of professional engineering.

The resent of mentors working side-by-side with students can come come many quarters. If mentors are not vigilant, they can dominate and squash the students' feelings of ownership and contribution. I can imagine urban legions about a team using all the students as drones for the pleasure of the mentors, but I have yet to observe one.

Some people get a greater thrill of accomplishment when they have done it with as little help as possible. FIRST is not about getting as little help as possible - In fact, it's the opposite- the goal is have to make you feel obligated to thank as many people as possible for helping you in ways that you didn't really think you needed or even considered that you could use help. And that's true if you are a student or a mentor.

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

What I've been thinking about for a couple of years, after meeting so many teams and learning from and about them, is that I think there are teams who believe they are student-run, but if they spent more time thinking about it, they would realize they are closer to the 50/50 mark. The mentors are working side-by-side with them and are supporting and guiding them. Where the mentors are failing the team is in not helping them understand the value of everyone working together. If the mentors are there and helping support the team effort and also encouraging the students to be actively involved in the different areas of what it takes to be a competition team - but are not acknowledging their own value and contributions to the efforts of the team, then there is still a distorted view that occurs on the part of the students. We have seen time and time and time again, that people like to argue about student-led and mentor-led. What we are seeing surface in this thread is: team-led. Working together. Mentors mentoring and students participating and learning. What I've thought about is that teams who spend all of their energy promoting and marketing themselves as a student-led team with little input from the mentors - are losing out. They are losing out by not taking the time to understand their team dynamics and what is really going on. Their mentors are losing out by not recognizing their value and how they contribute to the sustainability of their team. They also lose out by not acknowledging their wisdom and experience.

There's another facet of the team that is often downplayed by the team and is sometimes never fully embraced or acknowledged by the team: the value of the parent support. We see it everywhere - 'I'm just a mom' or 'I'm just a dad' or 'I just do what needs doing.' Parent support doesn't mean running the team. Parent support means providing the support so the team can run more efficiently. I'd much rather hear: "I am a parent for xxxx team and have been for 3 years.", than hear, "I'm just a mom." That doesn't tell me much about the parent or the team and sadly, I hear it all the time.

The more time a team takes to really spend looking at how it runs itself and what/where the keys contributions are, the less smack talk we'll hear or have to listen to. We'll see the evidence in how the team conducts and promotes itself. Very few teams (and I know there are some), are truly student-led, student-run, student-everything. Those that are or claim to be, should be able to break it down, financially, organizationally, and competitively. The rest should really take a good look at themselves. Many never will and will not strengthen the areas they are weak in. Those areas will reveal themselves during the competition, one way or another.

.02
Jane

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

Seeing how small our team is (about 7 students) our mentors work with us. It's just a total team effort.

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

Your doing the right thing Chris to "do things on the team" I assume however that as a mentor you are not to one designing massive portions of the robot, you are helping facilitate good ideas and creativity, maintaining an on-task team, or doing basic work if the team is small and needs an extra hand.

My issues arise when the students are not the ones thinking about how to solve the presented challenges, and implementing the solutions.

Have I clarified my position at all? Mentors are a wonderful necessity for a team, they just shouldn't be the ones making the bot.

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

Mostly the way to tell who built it to see who maintains the robot while its in the pit, if it is not the students, they likely didn't make it. This is a generalization of course but it seems to accurately reflect what I have seen the past three years.

Also I firmly agree to your second point so long as the line between assisting building/designing the bot and building/designing the bot is drawn. That's my issue.

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

Exactly. Mentors don't really do much actually labor on our team, if a job needs to be done and there is a student who has the ability to do it, and a mentor who knows how to the mentor gets the student and teaches the student. Not really 50/50 because we only have a few mentors but more of a 70/30 student/mentor

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

This made me laugh.

I've seen a few teams since I've started in FIRST where the robot was clearly build by a bunch of mentors because the students are nowhere to be found in/around the pits... And they're usually not good robots.

Back on subject though, on 816 the mentors prefer to step back and let the students do things, if they're able. When a student is not able to do something by themselves then one of the mentors will work with them side by side.

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

Actually, I think along similar lines as you. I just add one word to that sentence.

"Mentors are a wonderful necessity for a team, they just shouldn't be the only ones making the bot." (Also possible to use "primary" in that slot.)

I've got no problem with a mentor piling in to work. I have a problem if the mentor displaces a student for no apparent reason--major screwups are a reason--and then doesn't have the student stick around and watch, or assist. Or if the students are locked away from the robot by the mentors.

I REALLY don't have a problem if a student pushes a mentor out of the way to do some work, and accepts advice as they do the work. (I have a problem if the students completely block the mentors out, too.)

Back when I was in high school, my team was about 50-50. As an example, there is a picture (it is on CD, but not in CD-Media) of a student drilling into one side of a sprocket. A mentor is on the other side applying cutting fluid. Another example: A mentor didn't know CAD. Two students did. Guess who did the detail design and the build drawings for the parts they were working on? Yep, the students. Guess who made sure they got it right? Yep, the mentor. But on other components, mentors took the primary lead.

Re: How involved are your mentors?
 

As a mentor I try to follow:
with the students. Intent is to make sure they have the skills and are able to spread them to other students. And you will see interchanges between roboteers and I: "Mr Foster can you show me how to do X? No, but I showed Chuck and he can show you, lets get him" and I watch Chuck show how to do the construction.

Having said that, if we are short handed with students then I will build/ make/ assemble robot parts. I'm not going to let them miss ship date because someone isn't there. And the only time I <gently> push a roboteer away from a robot is when they are about to or are doing something that isn't safe.

I would like to see a 100% roboteer designed and built robot, but we have a problem that the roboteers that have the level of skills to do that graduate and go off to an engineering college. (I've tried starting a "Super Duper Double Senior" program, so far no takers)

So to summarize: