[gblake]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

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? ... It breaks my heart to see kids feel "disposable"; hell, I am the lead programmer and I feel that way sometimes.

..., but with the ~100 students who signed up for the team makes me worried. ... 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.

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! . 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