Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan Anderson
Bringing students through a disciplined engineering process gives them the knowledge that such processes are important for consistent success. Showing students how to do analysis and design gives them the right idea about real-world engineering and technology.
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I couldn't agree more with this statement. Our team has struggled in the past on the distribution between mentor and student design. The main goal of FIRST is to 'inspire' students to take interest in science and technology, not to build a robot.
What we have found is that a careful balance is needed to teach the students the design process, but not expect them to design everything. For Lunacy, the mentors did all of the calculations to determine how much stored energy was required to propel the ball over the goal and implemented that design criteria into an actual subsystem design. However, the students were there every step of the way and helped fabricate and build the design. By the end of the process they understood that mathematics can be applied into real world scenarios and saw the outcome of the application. At the end of the design almost all students could recite the process of how they went from an idea to a product. This is much better than trying to show applications of math by figuring out where two trains leaving two stations at different times and different speeds meet each other
We need to remember that constantly we hear that FIRST is 'not about the robot,' but inspiring young people to have the same passion for engineering that the mentor's have. Every team will do this a different way and there will never be a 'right' and 'wrong' way of doing it.