[asid61]

Originally Posted by hionwind

As the head mentor of 1678, I have always wanted to teach a course that was firmly entrenched in the FIRST program. Since our program works so well already, my goal was to not mess with what already works but build it into the curriculum.

This year, I proposed a "Robotics Engineering" curriculum to our school board and it was approved for next year. The curriculum is designed to allow students to explore the various aspects of the FIRST program and then, later, specialize in their preferred area. I envision it becoming a four year program with each year building on the previous one. A brief outline of the four year program is as follows:

Year 1 - Students take a variety of mini courses in the areas of CAD design, fabrication, mechanics, electronics, programming, business development, and media.

Year 2 - Students choose an area of specialization and work on a sub-team to develop their skills to a higher level. Peer or mentor-led workshops will be a major part of the second year curriculum.

Year 3 - Students become sub-team leaders and work on developing leadership and communication skills while continuing to develop their technical skills. Students would also run workshops and mentor first and second year students.

Year 4 - Students take on more responsibility including leadership of one or more outreach programs. I envision some kind of capstone project that would enable seniors to give back to their community in a meaningful way.

At this point, I have not developed the details of the curriculum for each of the four years but I think this gives an idea of where we are heading. Again, the main goal is to use what is already working in the FIRST program. As you can see, I really favor the "apprenticeship" model of learning which is really what FIRST is all about.

Our school district is very supportive of this curriculum and is providing us with facilities, equipment (computers, shop equipment, etc.) and even stipends for some of the mentors.

In this upcoming first year, the course will be taught as an after school program. Assessment will be done in much the way employees are evaluated at work. I will conduct periodic performance reviews and give feedback to each student on how they are progressing. The class will be graded on a pass-no pass basis.

I would be happy to give more details and would also love to hear any thoughts or suggestions.

Do you accept students from other schools? Haha.
This sounds amazing though.