[cad321]

Programming, controls and mechanical; all covered in an hour? That sounds like very little time to work through all those subjects. Perhaps you could focus on just one of those this time round. Have a purely mechanical or purely programming session.

If you've got your hearts set on doing it all though, you may need to do a lot of prep before hand to ensure you have time for it all.

Take making a mini arduino robot for instance. You could have your team assemble the main components ahead of time. Then when the class starts, have the participants assemble those prebuilt assemblies. From there you could have a basic code already made ready for upload, and then have a small portion of it needed to be programmed by the participants. Perhaps have the drive code already there and have them program some LED sequences or something.