[marshall]

Originally Posted by jweston

These quotes right here are raise a couple of common problems I'd like to see all of us work towards changing. The first problem is it's easy for us to assume a highly polished, well-designed, well-executed robot must be mentor-built. If you are at an event with such a team's robot, please go ask the students on that team how the robot works and what their process was (i.e. design, fabrication, training, project management, etc.) before jumping to such conclusions. You might learn something to help your team.

The other issue is giving into the temptation of having the most highly qualified people (usually mentors) do all of the work to the extent of crowding out of student participation. All teams want to put their best foot forward. It slows the process down if you have to incorporate less experienced students into the mix. But you have to bear in mind what the point of the program is. As much as we all love to win, the success of your team should be measured by how many highly engaged STEM students it turns out.

I agree with this. The only thing I would add is that just because the robot was built by mentors or is being repaired by mentors does not mean the students failed to learn or did not participate in the process. All teams are different and the level of participation by students or mentors in a given team is up to that team. On the flip side, teams should always and constantly reflect on these questions internally and I hope that they are. I know my own team does. We encourage conversations about the balance of student and mentor involvement. It has lead us to improve ourselves.