[pfreivald]

None of our students realized that simply adding a gusset to our lift arm would reduce the torque required by the motor by 43%. Indeed, most of our mentors didn't either...

...but it took our Woodie Flowers Award-winning mentor to walk kids through the design, why it was a good idea, and how to do it properly. None of them would have been ABLE to do it.

I see little value in a bunch of kids sitting around sharing their ignorance. They might learn something, sure -- but they won't be using the engineering design process all that well, and they won't be learning nearly as much.

There's nothing, and I mean NOTHING, wrong with learning from mentors as they help you design a robot, even if that means that sometimes the mentors shoulder some of the design work themselves.

This entire argument of student-vs-mentor built is silly. All-student-built robots might have their place (though I doubt there is truly such thing), as do student-and-mentor built robots, and even all-mentor-built robots (though I really, really, REALLY doubt there is such thing).