Quote:
Originally Posted by iggy_gim
So our team has traditionally emphasized the formal training of all of our new members, especially our freshmen, and this past year we experimented with an online course teaching them the basics of robotics. As a result, we have a ton of videos explaining programming, mechanics, etc.
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Does this sound like an interesting idea to anyone, like it could be useful, furthermore, does something like this already exist?
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To my knowledge, there is no central portal for FRC tutorial/seminar videos. That being said, there are a ton of amazing series that, put together, cover pretty much everything in FIRST. My personal favorite is the
Simbot Seminar Series, including the SolidWords series from last fall. Some other resources that pop into mind are 973's
RAMP channel and the
FRC Mastery LabVIEW tutorials. And there's also the
Behind the Lines series produced by GameSense, any recordings from the Championship seminars floating around on the web, the FIRST Fundraising Toolkit, Autodesk's
Built By Design series, etc.
I'm not sure how crucial it is to have a specific Udemy/coursera/EdX dedicated to FRC. I would much, much rather have a convenient, easily accessible portal to access video resources. Trawling around team websites is fun, but also a time sink. It could be as simple as a page filed on the FIRST Resources site (though that is a separate can of worms, given the new site's navigability).
Quote:
Originally Posted by KohKohPuffs
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Not entirely an online course, but something that involves hands-on activity like the idea I just put out will be more effective in my opinion.
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Absolutely. Applying knowledge is the only way to retain it, and it's the responsibility of each team to go out and use the knowledge that they learn. I don't think it should fall on the producing team to also develop a one-size-fits-all curriculum - each team approaches training in a different way. Rather, I'd love to see team publish their training methods as well as their materials.
So, for transparency's sake: 1912 has an apprenticeship system; build captains and mentors give tasks to other students and provide instruction as necessary. Need to get the chassis rolling? Today you learn how to assemble a gearbox. Time to lay out the control board? Ok, let me show you how to keep wires organized. Pros: You learn very thoroughly, and pretty much every student works on the final robot. Cons: This model does not scale up effectively, and I can see how larger teams would be unable to accommodate this during a tight build season.