Does robotics attract the right students?
 

I do not mean "wrong" as in we are attracting bad kids, but we are attracting kids who already have a set goal of going into STEM. Aren't we trying to attract kids who are on the other end of the spectrum? My mentality was that majority of the kids on the team would have joined regardless of the mission as long as it had robots. I can confidently say majority of the students who are on robotics already had the vision to become engineers and scientists, or at least were entertaining the thought of it.

What can we do to attract kids other than those who already have a goal in STEM? I know there are teams with dedicated business, and other non "build" departments within the team. However, is that really fulfilling FIRST's mission? I noticed many of the students end up doing something non build related. I am in no way trying to put the build team up on a pedestal, but I do notice it, like with many others have. Are we doing the job correctly if 80% of the team is in the stands cheering with a handful of people in the pits working on the robot? I have never been a "non build" team member; I have always been a programmer and on the drive team. It breaks my heart to see kids feel "disposable"; hell, I am the lead programmer and I feel that way sometimes.

Are we allocating the jobs correctly? I know, not everyone was made to be a Programmer, Welder, Electrician or anything, but with the ~100 students who signed up for the team makes me worried. I know that all 100 will not show up, but a big chunk will. There are simply not enough jobs for that many kids, and I worry that many of them will be turned away from STEM for that.

Re: Does robotics attract the right students?
 

I had an interesting conversation about the self-selection of participants in extracurricular activities with an attorney who is running for state legislature come 2012.

Here are some statistics on the five public high schools in Bellevue, WA, all of which have FRC teams, taken from the Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI).

The correlation between the years that the team has been in existence and the performance of the schools are pretty strong even while other factors such as teacher experience and student:teacher ratio have been relatively constant.

This suggests that whether or not students are on the team has no bearing on the fact that the presence of FIRST programs (or, at least FRC) enhances the educational environment of the schools.

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Moreover, I personally don't agree with the self-selection thing, if for no other reason than that I personally was not a STEM fanatic when I first joined my FLL team.

I do think that peer pressure, in this case a fantastic thing, causes students who otherwise never would've joined a team to show up at meetings with their friends or boyfriends or what have you. Even if everyone in this group isn't all retained, there are undoubtedly many who become immersed in STEM.

Re: Does robotics attract the right students?
 

Do you have any data on the scores before FRC? Could the presence of FRC not be the cause of this correlation, instead could the correlation be the result of schools that were already committed to Science (and therefore likely to have better test scores anyway) being more likely to start FRC teams. This would seem especially likely if the scores have not changed much since the teams were started. Though if you can show the scores went up since then your point makes more sense.

Re: Does robotics attract the right students?
 

We try to ask teachers in the school to identify students that would benefit from FIRST - typically the students that appear to have potential but may not be living up to it.

I think it's good to have a mix of students on the team. The overachiever types, the underachiever types, "in" crowd students, "out" crowd students, athletes, art students, etc. In that situation everyone learns a lot from the other students that they normally wouldn't hang out with, and hopefully some of the underinspired get a little inspiration from the alread-inspired (or at least they can see how the ambitious people operate).

Re: Does robotics attract the right students?
 

The key part of your sentence is "at least were entertaining the thought of it". If being on a FIRST team can help those students decide, then it is worth it. Some may have thought about being an engineer (to use one example of a STEM career - they are others) but after time with FIRST realized that either they totally love engineering or that they really don't want to go into that field. Isn't it better that they find that out before college?

Also, students interested in nonSTEM careers can benefit as well, and not just from learning the basic skills of team dynamics, time scheduling, leadership, public speaking, etc., that can be learned from being on the team. We have had students on our team who have focused on web design, graphics, videography, and have gone to college to study these areas.

As for the problem of too many students on the team, well that is a separate problem. I bet this has already been discussed in other threads.

Re: Does robotics attract the right students?
 

I find it very rewarding to look at the collection of students in our shop and seeing students who are enrolled and succeeding in multiple AP classes working hand in hand with "at risk students" who are struggling to get through high school on a standard diploma.

Do they all want to be engineers? No, but many of them want to go into technical fields and providing them the opportunity to be exposed to project design and management before college is awesome.

Re: Does robotics attract the right students?
 

Re: Does robotics attract the right students?
 

While this is true to some degree, there are also many kids who join who were not planning on going into STEM... the problem is, you don't ask them ahead of time! I can tell you, without a doubt, that many of the kids we recruit for our team were not already set for STEM. In fact, one of our best graduates (majoring in Electrical Engineering), had been planning on studying business before she joined the team.

You can only fit so many people around the robot at once... if you have 100 kids, then yes, you need to spread out your jobs a little, and many of them may not touch the robot. But that's part of the beauty of FIRST - There's so much more for students to do than build a robot. You can have a team focused on animation, another focused on CAD, one focused on PR, one focused on fundraising, one focused on the website... in short, there's something there for everyone to do. And quite frankly, it really doesn't matter if you have someone on the team who doesn't want to work on the robot - if they spend all their time working on PR or managing the team's finances because that's what they like doing, then it helps to give them valuable experience that they'll use down the road.

We graduated 6 this past year, and all of them were profoundly impacted by what they did on the team - and some of them never worked on the robot! It was amazing to see them all considering majors that related to the areas of the team they worked with.

If you don't have enough jobs for everyone, then it's time to expand your program. Go after all those awards that don't have to do with the robot. Dedicate two build teams and build yourself a practice bot. Spin off a "JV" team to participate in the Vex challenge. Dedicate someone on the team as a project manager, and his/her sole job would be to ensure that everyone has a meaningful job they enjoy.

Re: Does robotics attract the right students?
 

What Eagle33199 said. Either make your program bigger, or make your amount of students smaller. As a quote from Karthik, "Always work within your means". It's pretty self explanatory, so I think you know what to do from here.

Re: Does robotics attract the right students?
 

Let's assume for the sake of discussion a hypothetical situation in which 100% of your students that signed up for the team (1 or 100, doesn't matter) already were unequivocally convinced that they wanted to be an engineer since the age of 5 and have already signed up for their college of choice by the time they joined the team. The fact in this situation is that even if you aren't "converting" non-STEM students into STEM junkies, you are providing them with an experience and education that they will not get elsewhere. At least once a week, I hear students on our team that are undeniably good at math and science comment about learning something new in the implementation of math and science. We have statistics from even our short 3 years in FRC that show that even the already STEM focused students benefited to some extent from our program. Basically, IMHO, in the end the mix of students isn't as important as spreading the word of FIRST and giving the student a unique experience.

Re: Does robotics attract the right students?
 

These are good questions, and they are worth discussing.

First off, here is FIRST's Mission Statement, which I think helps to answer your questions:
"Other end of the spectrum" may not be the best way to put it. Some people - most people - simply are not going to be engineers for one reason or another. Not their cup of tea. The idea isn't to persuade everyone. It is rather, as Carol said, to help swing the students who either didn't know about engineering as a career, or weren't sure of engineering as a career, to pursue the profession after high school. As a result, teams made up only of students who were already decided on engineering have a ceiling on the impact they can possibly make. Still, even engineering-tracked students can benefit from participation (real world project and teamwork experience, technical experience with relevant technologies at an early level, resume builder, etc.)

FIRST is actually all about trickery! Many students join because of the travel, the fun of competition, but end up getting inspired once they get "hooked". You just need to get them through the door. Giving students other avenues for joining the team to all sorts of wonderful things. People join the website team, and end up becoming professional engineers (case in point: Me). People join the Chairman's team and end up pursuing engineering. If you have the bandwidth, having non-technical subteams is a great way to attract students who may be turned off by the "nuts and bolts" at first. Especially, in my experience, females.

Yes. Look at FIRST's Mission Statement. "Science and technology leaders" are engineers, but also 3D modelers, website designers, technical communicators, technical entrepreneurs, etc. There are plenty of "non-build" ways to fulfill this vision.

I would say the answer depends on the 80%. Have they been inspired? Learned new skills? Considering pursuing careers in science and technology related fields? Even if they aren't, do they have a newfound appreciation and respect for science and technology? If yes, then you are doing your job correctly. You can only fit so many people in the pits. Still, 100 students sounds pretty overwhelming to me. You need a LOT of mentorship to steer a herd that large.

Re: Does robotics attract the right students?
 

IMO FRC teams pragmatically generate, at best, better problem solvers. It doesn't matter if the student is an English major in college because he/she was on the CA team or business team. Being motivated to participate and succeed in a large-scale project is what benefits any student, regardless of that student's educational background. Better problem solvers nets us a better-prepared employment force that can handle changes in industry, ergo can keep themselves employed (and on a more selfish note, will keep my 401k portfolio from tanking every few years...).

Yet regarding producing new Engineers -- I recall reading a study where most engineers in college were already curious or motivated to enter engineering before they entered high school. I'll have to find the article. In practice, this seems to hold true since our team has had much better recruiting opportunities with the kids we (and by extension, the county) have already inspired with FLL/VEX/SeaPerch at the lower grades.

This engineer recruitment cycle may seem like we're taking the 'easy' road by not trying to recruit high students who aren't already interested in engineering -- yet we don't see it that way. We see it as simply inspiring new engineers at a younger age, then using our robotics programs to better prepare them for hard problem solving, with the hope that most of them will continue on to engineering as a career. Additionally, many of the high school students recruit their friends, and also go to the FLL teams and mentor them, creating a sort of organic self-sustaining generator of new engineers. It works for us, and tbh I'm glad we have the problem of 'too many applicants' every year.

Re: Does robotics attract the right students?
 

The students that I work with never touch the robot. They instead write the award submissions, spec sheets, and outreach programs for our team. Many of them are insanely talented in graphics and other arts. Yes many of them also simply cheer on the team at competition when they aren't giving presentation or talking to other teams or judges but so what, that’s exactly what everyone on the robots side does when they aren’t driving or fixing the bot. The big question is, what does this have to do with FIRST's mission?

These students, who may not have had an understanding of what science and technology can do for them now have appreciation of it. They get why it’s important for everyone to study STEM even if they are not planning on going into a STEM field. They understand how studying STEM can lead to more creative and innovative students in all fields of study. I ask you this... how many of the world’s great innovation were developed from ideas presented first by writers and artists. Here's a hint, watch Star Wars or Star Trek and read some Julies Verne and keep a notebook as you will need it to keep track.

Re: Does robotics attract the right students?
 

There is more to the STEM robotics domain than FRC. FIRST has more programs and there are other completely separate programs.

If anyone connected to an FRC team wants to attract a more diverse set of students, or wants to influence students who aren't already pointed toward a STEM career; I recommend either finding some way to get them onto that FRC team, or convincing them to try a semi-relaxed 3-month stint on a VRC team, or try coding up a good BotBall entry, or....

The question, as it is posed is really an ill-formed question. It mashes together an assumption that FRC is the only program under discussion, that it is the FRC program's job to attract the "right" students, and that the influence of local circumstances is less important than the program's features.

I do agree that David raises an important point, but the topic is so tangled up in program-type, and local circumstances that useful answers (instead of useful suggestions) are very hard to come by if the questions and ensuing discussions aren't carefully structured. There are way too many variables involved for a broadly framed question to have an answer other than "It depends."

On the other hand, the door is wide open for plenty of useful suggestions for ways to attract many types of students into whatever STEM program is right for the students in question. Some folks have already posted them. Personally I'm a fan of using the lower-cost and highly-accessible VRC and FTC sorts of programs to involve/attract as many students as possible, and then building bigger-budget (assuming the "community" is engaged and supportive) programs on top of the solid foundation created by them.

To David's point, and speaking broadly and in metaphors; I think a walk, then trot, then run approach; will wind up attacting more students of all stripes than trying to start off running. Pyramids are more stable, and enclose more volume, than towers.

Blake

Re: Does robotics attract the right students?
 

You don't need to. You've mentioned that you're afraid that there won't be enough STEM related jobs for your teammates. So so what if there aren't? Is it so bad if these students don't go into STEM? Every student that becomes involved in FIRST helps FIRST's goals... even if they've never touched a robot.

This made me think about something that happened to me recently. I was wearing my old team sweater and a stranger came up to me and started talking about FIRST. One of the first things she asked me was where was my purple jacket (at my university, almost all the engineering students get leather jackets and dye them purple). When I said that I don't have one because I'm studying Film and English, she was confused. "But you were in FIRST!"

This in turn made me think: am I a "failed FIRST student" because I wasn't "inspired" enough to become an engineer? I would say no.

I got into FIRST because I was a member of my elementary school's LEGO robotics club. I had fun. So I joined FRC in grade 9. I decided the next year to forgo working on the robot in order to work on awards and scouting. I decided building wasn't my thing, so I did something else. And now I'm studying Film.

This quote sums up what FIRST is all about:
I may not have chosen engineering as a career, but I definitely still celebrate science and technology. I'm still involved in FIRST, mentoring a local team. If anyone gives me the chance, I talk about FIRST for hours. And in my mind, that's just as important as creating lots and lots of engineers.

Only a select part of the population can be employed as engineers, just like only a select part of the team can work on the robot. But these people who aren't working on the robot are just as if not more important to changing the culture than the students who become engineers are.

Just because a student can't work on a robot and therefore doesn't become inspired to become an engineer (or turn away from STEM) doesn't mean that they have failed FIRST. Instead, they are spreading it into areas that otherwise wouldn't be concerned with FIRST at all (like Film and English students :D )

Re: Does robotics attract the right students?
 

I think each team bears the responsibility of bringing in and engaging a variety of students who will benefit FIRST. In my experience, I can say that FIRST is attracting people who benefit from the program - I have seen this from my own FIRST experience and from working with others. Engineering, for the most part, is not visible as a career option to most young people. FIRST makes it visible and attractive to both students who entered the program with and without prior interest in math and science.

When I joined my school's team, I was interested in math and science, but had never heard of engineering and had certainly never considered it as a career option. Robotics sounded cool, but I wasn't sure if I was knowledgeable enough to be able to actually contribute. There were wonderful mentors on the team who pushed me to get involved in hands-on work and actually building things, whereas I might have been too shy and unsure of myself to jump into those things myself. Meetings were right after one of my dance classes, and my dad will still tell you that he was initially surprised to see me come home dressed as a ballerina but covered in grease, talking about how I got to help build a transmission. It didn't take long for me to get hooked on FIRST, or to discover that engineering was actually really awesome and exactly what I wanted to apply my interest in math and science to. I am a FIRST success story. Without FIRST, I likely never would have discovered an interest in engineering or applied to schools to study engineering. Now, I will be graduating from MIT this spring with a BS in Materials Science and Engineering, and I will be going to work for Pratt & Whitney as an engineer.

I have seen similar stories among my peers on my team and others, in those who came before me and were my mentors, and in those who see me as a mentor figure. FIRST cultivates new types of interest in and understanding of STEM fields and inspires people to pursue these fields. In addition to the technical skills and hands-on experience FIRST gives to its participants, it also develops self-confidence, leadership, teamwork, and technical skills in those students. This applies both to people who had some prior interest in STEM, and many other who may have joined for non-technical aspects of the team, or just because their friends were doing it. So yes, I think FIRST is effective in reaching new groups and inspiring people to pursue the STEM fields.

Re: Does robotics attract the right students?
 

I definitely agree with what has already been said. Additionally, imagine what your team would be like if everyone only wanted to work on the robot and nobody wanted to do the business related stuff. The team wouldn't have any sponsors, no media or marketing, no website...

You mentioned atcompetitions feeling bad that people were in the stands and only a handful of people were in the pits. What fun would the game be if nobody watched and cheered, and isn't scouting integral to success for top-tier teams? Additionally, from experience, it is unproductive and impratical for the entire team to stand around in your pit, there is just not enough space.

I'm not trying to berate you, just trying to point out it is important to have people who aren't totally focused on the robot. With that said, I would still branch out to FTC or find another way to make sure anyone who is interested in building/design/programming has a chance to do it. It would not be a good idea to force a student into doing business or media activities if they truly want to be designing or programming the robot.

Re: Does robotics attract the right students?
 

My previous post was a bit vague. This one will get into specifics.

On a 5-person VEX Robotics Competition team, is is almost impossible for 80% of the team members to be anywhere other than driving/coaching, building, maintaining, scouting, and talking during every tournament. In fact, every person on a 5-person VRC team is likely to have at least two important responsibilities the day of the competitions, and leading up to them. That eliminates the both laments in the quote above.

The cost of a decent, first-year VRC team that attends a couple of tournaments (day trips) is around $1500 (less the 2nd year). Divide $1500 by 5 students and you get a great STEM Robotics experience (including as much right-brained and business activity for every team member as the team wants to take on) for $300 per student. The costs are substantially lower in nearly every year afterward.

Put 100 students into 20 VRC teams of 5 students each. Budget $1500 for each team. Total budget is $30,000 for a full, fine, 100-student season of iterative learning, competition, fund raising, business planning, project management, cheering, advertising, public speaking, mentoring, and ....

Add $3,000 to that $30,000, and those 100 students can host a great tournament to complement any others in your region, or can be the founders of a great regional activity. It will be affordable, accessible, sustainable, and valuable, and can steadily engage students 12 months out of 12, or for the entire school year (other programs, like FRC can be run as a 12-month program also, but with a different rhythm and with some extreme peaks and valleys that are both exhilarating and taxing/exhausting).

So, I don't know what your FRC team's budget is, but I'll bet that by blending a modest FRC program with broad participation in VRC or a similar program, your school will be able to ensure all students put their hands on a VEX robot, a pit display, a strategy, a team calendar, a budget and a set of talking points; and ensure that those students iteratively improve all of those items over the course of a each spread-out, multi-tournament season. Your school will then be able to use the FRC program and robot as the capstone project for a 100-student STEM army! :ahh:. At that point, any perception that your school's STEM robotics program is a funnel through which only a few students "truly" pass, while the rest miss out; should melt away. Diversity creates strength.

Then, at FRC events, students who do the cheering or do the business model or do whatever, can be lending their best special talents to the FRC team, not making do with leftovers; and will in parallel be intimately involved in everything on their lower-cost (high return) VEX team. Even if some students aren't maintaining or building the FRC robot, I hope FRC tournaments won't the the time when they feel they miss-out on opportunities. Instead, FRC tournaments can become the time when they get to relax a bit and soak up all the fun of being a fan who knows the story behind the story, and can appreciate best efforts of all the teams. Who knows, they might even fan out and help some rookie teams or others who are struggling....

We (STEM Robotics participants) don't have to force fit every person or their contributions into one program. When we ask about "robotics" (see the title of this thread) we are being terribly myopic if we think robotics is a synonym for FRC, or only FIRST programs, or only BEST, or only VRC, or ... STEM robotics is a big topic and there are programs that are well-suited for almost any situation, including giving 100 students opportunities, choices and experiences well-suited to each of their needs and aspirations.

Blake

Re: Does robotics attract the right students?
 

Unfortunately, the statistics available from WA OSPI were not as thorough back then. The Titan Robotics team (492) was formed in the 2000-2001 school year. Newport (948) and Bellevue (949) started competing in 2002.

The first year that a standardized science test was administered was in the 2002-2003 school year; 492 was in their 3rd competition season by the time the test was administered, and 948/949 were in the 2nd competition season, if I'm not mistaking. At the time, 1899 (Interlake) and 2412 (Sammamish) did not exist.

*The Bellevue School District is an awfully inaccurate school district to examine for two reasons.

First, International School (492) has a student enrollment system different from the other schools. It is done by lottery, and very academia-focused (i.e. no school sports, few extracurriculars, etc.) Moreover, the school spans from 6th to 12th grade, meaning that students get 3 years' more exposure to the clubs in the school than they otherwise would at a traditional 4-year senior high school.

Second, Interlake High School (1899) adopted an accelerated program in the 2006-2007 school year (2nd year of 1899 in FRC) as a continuation of the middle school program. Many gifted students that otherwise would've been at 948, 949, and 2412's schools are attending Interlake. The subsequent inflation of test scores makes statistics for 1899 a clear outlier.


**The change in scores per year of FRC team existence is the absolute change in percentage points, not a measure of the rate of growth/improvement on tests.


However, these statistics are enough to draw a few conclusions.

For one, the correlation between 2003 test scores and the presence of FRC teams is very weak; in fact, 948's school had stronger test scores than 492's school. However, by 2010 there clearly has been a drastic change in performance, and every school saw growth. In other words, FRC magnifies academic performance.
Second, the change in test scores is not a linear function. More veteran teams that have a stronger presence in the school will have a greater impact for a given duration of time (i.e. year to year) than will a newer team.


Further extensions: demographic constituency, team size/percentage of school population, mentor number/mentor:student ratio, economic status (as measured by free/reduced lunch qualification), among others. This is the project devised for my internship at FIRSTWA, and I will be mining more thorough data on teams across the entire state of Washington. Once I have better data to back up more sophisticated conclusions later in the year, I'll be sure to post them or publish a white paper or something.

Re: Does robotics attract the right students?
 

You made me remember a very important point... One of the most celebrated individuals on our team last year never touched the robot. She spent 3 years organizing and expanding our scouting program, and that scouting program is a huge reason we've done as well as we have. it's enabled us to find the teams that compliment us, while not necessarily being the "best" teams at the competition.

Scouting takes more than writing numbers down on a piece of paper... it takes an intimate knowledge of the details of all the robots competing, and a broad understanding of all the technologies and approaches each team used. Without an understanding of engineering principles, you can't scout effectively.

Re: Does robotics attract the right students?
 

You have just perfectly summed up all of scouting in FIRST. That was amazing!

Re: Does robotics attract the right students?
 

Does this raise other questions like:
What to do with 100 students on a team to keep everyone motivated and actively engaged?

Re: Does robotics attract the right students?
 

Larry,

Be careful. From what you have shown us so far, you can not draw the conclusions you listed in your post. Correlation does not mean causation.

Until you compare datasets in which the ONLY difference is the presence of a STEM robotics program, and until you can see variation in test scores that matches variations in the STEM robotics program; you simply can not tell if the robotics programs are symptoms, causes, or coincidences.

What you see in your data could be the result of many influences.

I hope you can devise a method for showing causation and not just correlation; but I don't think you have that method in place yet.

Blake

Re: Does robotics attract the right students?
 

A more fundamental question would be "Why attempt to put 100 students into a single team?"