Quote:
Originally Posted by hauki
If the build team is totally getting off track what should be the mentors role? I've tried to influence them to get back on track with little success. I've worked in the high tech industry for 30 years and have seen many projects fail. I feel at this point the team is not going to get a robot built. Should I just let them fail and call it a learning experience? Is it my role to build the robot for them? I don't think this is correct.
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Re: Getting off track?
Was the basic engineering design process used from the start of the season? Did the team come up with a list of priorities and rank them? Have they done that for each of the sub-teams? If so, then you can point to them back to those and remind them that they aren't working to what they said their priorities were.
If they didn't follow the basic engineering design process, it might be worth having a team meeting for 30 minutes (with the lead mentor/coach introducing you and what you want to do, including your background - this is critical so the team understands
all of the mentors/coaches are on board with this) and have the students evaluate each of the various things going on and what is and isn't working, what is and isn't feasible, etc. Let the students come up with the answers. If there's something you see going on, guide them to that answer.
Re: Failure
"Failure is not an option" when human lives are at stake. There are no human lives at stake in this competition. We live in a society where nobody is allowed to make mistakes anymore. I say, let them make mistakes and fail. They will learn more from that than they will from having everything work out.
I can tell you of several robots I've worked on over the years, but one of the lessons I will never forget is because of a pneumatic piston that my professor and I couldn't get to rotate, regardless of what we did. The Monday after the competition, he came to the lab and said he spoke to his wife (a civil engineer) about it. She reminded him that we were trying to rotate the piston through the center line, rather than using something slightly off, like a crane uses. I probably didn't explain that clearly, but it's definitely something that I will remember because it was a failure, not a success.
Re: Mentor a part of team?
As others have said, the mentor is a part of the team. However, I was working with a team earlier this year that I was never introduced to and felt like I was only able to contribute to a few students because they were willing to accept the help. (I do miss those students and feel guilty when I think of them.) That was a team with several years under their belt and didn't want to change how they did things.
I am lucky in that the rookie team I am with now and I gel quite well.
Working with the rookie team was always planned, but I intended to keep working with the other team, as well.
In the end, I had to make a decision based on my emotional well-being, and it was accepted and understood by the mentors of the other team. (In fact, it was expected that I would end up only working with the rookie team.)
My point is, if your emotional well-being is compromised by the attitudes of this current team, please re-evaluate if it is the right team for you. As adults, we're often expected to "just deal with" things. The reality is, if you don't take care of yourself emotionally, things will get worse for you and the team.
Re: Other opportunities
If you find that this is not the right team, there are other ways to volunteer for this year at local regionals/competitions. Next year, you can try to work with a local rookie team. I find it is far easier to work with rookie teams than established teams because rookies need guidance and have not gotten "set in their ways".
I apologize for the length of this post, but I wanted to touch on a number of issues that I thought were important.