How to get students join the team?
 

Hi,
I have a hard question that my team is discussing.
What is the best way the get students join the team.
Some history on my team:
Last year we were rookies and our school was new growing school (We had only 10th graders, and this year we have 10th and 11th graders....)
The team was built from 16 10th grades.
This year we had only 2 new members even though the new grade in the high school is bigger then our grade. There was no intrest in FRC.

Re: How to get students join the team?
 

First thing you do, is you advertise the team everywhere: have a robot open house and freshman orientation, put posters in the hall, if your school lets you-have the robot during lunch. Teachers on our team will normally do a quick shameless plug in their classes.
Once you're established enough, FLL teams at middle schools bring kids in. Demo-ing in the community also can bring attention and teammates.

Remind students that no prior skills are nessicary to join. Remind students (and especially parents) about all the scholarship opportunities.
Another big thing is roping your friends in, and convincing siblings, and siblings friends, and friend's siblings.

Have members talk about the team- why they like it and why people should join. Mention all the opportunities that FIRST has to offer... and that its not just about the robot. Artsy kids might really dig animation. The forensics kids might really like the marketing aspect (and presenting for chairman's). And so on and so forth.

Lastly, if you can people at a competition- official or otherwise- they can see how crazy and fun FIRST is.

Re: How to get students join the team?
 

One thing that we do that can help your team increase interest is doing a presentation to the high school and the 8th grade in the middle school. We bring our robot and show them competition footage. We explain to them everything that the team does and then if the student is interested, they have to apply and interview. If you need more help or suggestions, please PM me. :)

Cass

Re: How to get students join the team?
 

Stress recruitment among your current students. Have them bring in their younger friends. Younger siblings can be especially powerful recruitment tools, practically the entire senior class of my former team originally joined because they were friends of my younger brother.

Re: How to get students join the team?
 

NEMO has a great document at the link below.

http://www.firstnemo.org/PDF/Recruiting_Students.pdf

I would also suggest trying to do a demonstration at one of your faculty meetings. Other teachers are great recruitment tools because they know which students might benefit from joining the team the most.

Re: How to get students join the team?
 

When we've run into problems like this, we've found that the easiest ways to get people who are really into first are to either:
drag in random friends, give them tools, and tell them to do something. They won't understand what's going on, but by the time they've figured it out they're normally already hooked.
or to look for kids in physics classes that have already had some experience building things. Kids with carpenters or construction workers, or if you're really lucky engineers for parents can be not only a great supply of already partially trained kids, but mentors as well.

Re: How to get students join the team?
 

Feed them.:D

Re: How to get students join the team?
 

That's always a good option! :)

Re: How to get students join the team?
 

This is a wonderfully helpful thread, thanks everyone for the information.

Re: How to get students join the team?
 

We do robot demos during lunch time in the cafeteria. It helped out A LOT.

We also make visits to every class: specifically science, math, and engineering classes.

Next year, we're participating at athletics events with a t-shirt cannon so we can have a robotics booth set up for recruiting and we're going to particpate at the school rallies.

Re: How to get students join the team?
 

Invite them to a FIRST event (regional or off season event) if it's local. Nothing sells FIRST better than seeing the end product in action.

Re: How to get students join the team?
 

That is actually a great idea! I might have to see if we could do that ourselves!

Re: How to get students join the team?
 

Thanks! The key thing with recruiting your own high school is to simply support the school and everyone a part of it and they support the team back. It's worked amazingly for us.

and yeah, i can't believe I forgot our middle school students. It won't be this year but the year after, we're going to do summer camps for the 7th graders and have 8th graders automatically join the team after the school year ends.

This year, we're only doing the 8th grade part. We're visiting their middle school and presenting to all the 8th graders.

Re: How to get students join the team?
 

We were a rookie team last year as well. At the end of the school year, a couple members from our team went to the middle school to present the robot and show some videos of it in action. Videos were the best we could do since there's no 'local' regionals (closest is probably Boilermaker all the way in Lafayette!). That got a couple freshman interested, but we only managed to hold on to them until mid-build season. That wasn't too hard of a hit for us, but we managed to pull through and finish our bot this year.

This year we gained 3 or 4 new members, giving us a total of 7 students, 3 mentors, and 2 teachers. We're hoping to do some presentations at the middle school again and get even more 8th graders interested, nothing feels better than showing off your robot. :)

Re: How to get students join the team?
 

only make sure people arent only showing up for the free food

Re: How to get students join the team?
 

We have a similar problem, only we have a total of 11 students right now. We've tried everything from middle school presentations, participating in the local fair, you name it. We just started 2 FLL teams and we know we have one 8th grader who is joining in September. We also have an Engineering Academy through our Vocational & Technical school and when the the VoTech has their Quality Cup (open house of all the academies) the Engineering Academy usually lets me have a table for robot stuff and I drive the Vex around while our freshmen give the details of the team. we actually got one of the freshmen who was working another table come over to me and he was talking to me about joining and now he is our mascot and is starting to learn how to do electrical work

Re: How to get students join the team?
 

no no no. i didn't post that and as soon as i figure out how to delete it...ugh i think it's time for a CD password change. i need to protect myself from the programmers/expert hackers of the team..

Re: How to get students join the team?
 

One of the things we tell students when we go out to schools is that we need people to do lots of things. The example we give is of a chef going the team.

We sure could use one to stop all these McDonalds runs.......

Re: How to get students join the team?
 

I feel your pain, my team consists of 14 girls from grades 9-12. I've found a fantastic way to advertise though is through videos of prior competitions, of your robot in action, etc.

Also, a HUGE thing is the merchandise. As soon as you having flaming unicorns on the back of your hoodies, everyone wants to come to the competition. I'm not kidding, unicorns are a big deal here.

If you can, see if there are any FLL teams in the area and advertise your team there. Those kids know what FIRST is about and how much fun the competition is.

Another thing is incorporating your robots in school events. Genghis Khan, last year's robot, has been part of this year's Senior Skits for our school and PIMP, this year's robot, is going to be putting up our team banner next to all of the "real" sports banners.


And trust me, the most important thing you can do is have your team members show some team spirit and wear their t-shirts, hoodies, buttons, etc. Most people are actually interested in joining, they just don't know that much about it and they don't know who to talk to. Make your team available to them, not some super secret clique.

Re: How to get students join the team?
 

As others have said, it's all about advertising. They've posted great ideas about that here, so I'm not going to re-hash them. From what I've seen, the biggest reason kids don't get involved (especially freshmen) is the time commitment. It's not like soccer, football, baseball, basketball, or any other sport - this isn't something they've done before and thus know it's worth the time commitment. It's something that sounds like fun, but they just don't know for sure that it will be.

So, your job is to first get them interested in learning more, and then get them hooked. Advertising will get them interested, getting them hooked takes a bit more. It takes getting them in a lab or shop and doing some actual work. It takes getting them interacting with the rest of the team and seeing for themselves how fun and stimulating robotics can be.

We started a "summer camp" for prospective students last year, and it seemed to work really well. We got a lot of incoming freshmen and sophomores to show up for a few hours a night for two weeks, and worked with them building Junior Theremins from this site: http://www.madlab.org/kits.html

Those are great little projects that can be done quickly, get someone hooked, and give them something they can take home with them.

So, I recommend once you get a group of interested people, get them in the shop and interacting with your team before the season starts. Focus on something that requires a low time commitment but teaches them valuable skills while having fun.

Re: How to get students join the team?
 

As a part of your recruiting, I would also suggest advertising the scholarships that are available to students on your team who participate in the program. This can be a good way to attract upperclassmen who are certain they'd like to study STEM subject areas after high school.

Usually these students end up wishing they were a part of the team earlier!

Re: How to get students join the team?
 

As people have mentioned, robot demos definitely get a lot of people hooked. However, don't just show off the robots, but let prospective newbies drive them!
You do have to be careful about mentioning college to people. The people who sign up for the ability to add robotics to their transcript generally quit the team pretty quickly once they figure out how it actually works. We'll mention it it on one of the posters that we put up around our school before our interest meeting, but at the actual meeting we're very careful to emphasize that while FIRST involvement is a powerful tool, you will only get out of FIRST what you put into it...

Re: How to get students join the team?
 

We have found that it's easier to get students involved in the team during off-season events. We have a lot of team building outings during the summer and that's where we usually invite our incoming students, that way they get to know the other students and the mentors in a less-stressful environment. We usually do bowling, minigolf, or trips to the beach, stuff like that.

But advertising is also a big part of it, as other people have said.

Another, slightly more corny idea, is a "bring a friend to robotics" day on your team. That's actually how I got involved my freshman year.

I hope this helps! :)

Re: How to get students join the team?
 

As previously mentioned, we get most of our new recruits through presentations at the middle schools at the end of the year. We also have a lot of siblings and friends of siblings.

I think something that really helps a lot is an easy to navigate website. We've gotten a lot of recruits simply from them seeing our website on in out displays and signing up via the form on our page.

EDIT: I forgot to add this...

Believe it or not, but we make a huge effort to loose the "Robotics" connection. While it might seem counter-productive or "not in the spirit of FIRST", I feel that a lot of students are scared away by the word robotics...they feel that they aren't smart enough or that robots are only for the "nerdy" kids. When we give recruitment presentations, we promote all of the other equally as important roles on the team (business, art/graphic design, music, writing, public relations) This helps us include more of the high school community and bring in kids who would never even have considered joining.

Re: How to get students join the team?
 

That's funny, we do almost the exact opposite! We advertise it as all about the robot, and have the robot out in front of the school as much as possible. When our students talk, they invariably start out with something like "When I joined the team, I didn't know how to do anything! The mentors and returning members spend a lot of time making sure you learn how to do everything that's needed to build a robot (even how to use a drill properly!)." We make sure we put a big emphasis on "no experience necessary" every time we talk with a prospective student.

Of course, we also talk about all the other functions on the team - the need for PR, scouting, fundraising, etc... but that's not the focus.

Re: How to get students join the team?
 

Siblings are a HUGE part of a team... Both my older brothers have been on the team and now i am .... my sister will be on it next year. Also my Dad's company is our biggest sponsor, My mom also helps out and will be helping with the business people next year ... We are a FIRST Family !

Re: How to get students join the team?
 

great ideas,
we will adopt those ideas
thank you!