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Originally Posted by team F.T.C 4240
Blake,
In the manual it says "The Engineering Notebook is also a good place to discuss and show team activities that are done throughout the team’s season. These activities can be placed in a separate section of the Engineering Notebook or chronologically within the design pages."
To me that means if say we went to an Engineering facility for tour to get ideas of what we could use in the robots design, or the vast amount of community service the team does, it shouldn't just be thrown away or confuse people by have three or four notebooks.
The manual says "Document EVERYTHING!!", not throw out everything but prototypes, CAD, building process and programming, ect. Connect Award (first sentence): "This award is given to the team that most connected with their local community and the engineering community", if you leave out what I said earlier then how will the judges know you did anything at all for the community or reached out to engineering company's, there is more then enough space in the engineering notebook for a small section about community service, ect. It is also a lot easier to keep track of one notebook apposed to two or three.
The team's notebook isn't perfect and it doesn't need to be, in my mind it just needs to get the information over to the judges of how we went through our whole year (so far) as a team, the team spends a lot of time on the engineering notebook documenting everything, not only to be eligible for awards but it is also very good for past references and is a nice reminder of the past year.
We document everything, but that is just my team. If your team wants to only document specific things its up to you, every team is different and like a team there is no robot/notebook alike, which is the great thing about FTC is there is so much creativity. Write the engineering notebook the way it seems fit for your team or however you want, but the best thing to do is read the game manual (section 5 for the engineering notebook).
~Derrick
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Derrick,
I'm not writing about your team, I'm writing to any team.
There is no doubt that the Game Manual includes these words:
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12. The Engineering Notebook is also a good place to discuss and show team activities that are done throughout the team’s season. These activities can be placed in a separate section of the Engineering Notebook or chronologically within the design pages.
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So, I think we agree that putting non-engineering material in a section of the notebook that is clearly separated from the Engineering material is one good option. Notice that this item doesn't say that the Engineering Notebook is the best place for the non-engineering material; and also notice that the other items in the list discuss putting engineering material into the Engineering Notebook; and also notice that the Think Award criteria (and other "engineering" awards that use the notebook) ignore the non-engineering material (so be careful not to let it get in the way of the engineering material).
That game manual item quoted above is the 12th item in a list of 13 items that appear under this heading:
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The FIRST Tech Challenge Engineering Notebook is a complete documentation of your team’s Robot design. This documentation should include sketches, discussions and team meetings, design evolution, processes, the “Aha’s!”, obstacles, and each team member’s thoughts throughout the journey for the entire season. A new notebook should be created for each new season. So here are the guidelines:
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The "Document everything" admonition also appears under that heading. It's pretty clear that teams are admonished to document everything that is "engineering", and it is less clear that they are admonished to document all non-engineering activities/information too. In particular the Think Award asks judges to use teams' Engineering Notebooks to evaluate engineering materials, not non-engineering materials. I don't think any other award criteria ask the judges to use the Engineering Notebook as a source of anything other than engineering information.
No one said to throw out anything. A couple of people did recommend putting engineering into Engineering Notebooks, and recording/submitting other information elsewhere.
I believe Awards like the Connect Award are judged using information gained during interviews and perhaps by referring to simple printed material given to judges during interviews. I don't think the Connect and similar awards are expected to be based on information judges have to find in the Engineering Notebook.
Judges have very little time to spend on any single team or topic, when looking for evidence to back up a team's assertion or a judge's assessment. Based on years of professional experience, and on recent similar experiences in STEM robotics judging, I'll assure you that it is far easier to have simple separate submissions from a team about how they satisfied engineering and non-engineering awards' criteria, than it is to have one integrated submission that puts everything in chronological order. A single submission that contains separate sections for each information category is a compromise, but it can not be simultaneously used/shared by separate groups of judges.
Trust me, judges are smart enough not to become confused by clearly labeled, separate documents/submissions.
You and your colleagues are obviously proud of how you choose to organize your team's records. I'm glad about that; and I have no doubt that each one makes a nice momento for the teams archives.
However, when giving other teams advice about how to make their Engineering notebooks better, I recommend being careful to explain that your advice might be more about how to make a better Season Diary (that happens to be in the Engineering Notebook); than it is about creating an Engineering Notebook that better satisfies the central thrust of the Engineering Notebook Guidelines and Think Award Criteria, and is consequently easily evaluated against those criteria. Those two subjects overlap; but they are not the same. Everyone involved in the process of advising others has a duty to be clear about those sorts of differences.
Blake