Our team will already have a fair idea of what was in the KOP last year. We do demos throughout the fall of things like how to calculate the torque a motor will generate, how the pneumatics hook up, calculating how much force they will exert. We tailor all the examples to motors that were available last year, so that by the end of the fall, the new students have a fair idea of what is in the KOP.
However, some of the design things we do helps with outside the box thinking. We will meet and watch kickoff together as a team. There will be some talk afterwards, but most people will head home then. A group of people will be tasked to create a real rough playing field/objects for the next day. Then we StuBot. Have students play the game as if they were the robots to help learn the rules, and see what strategies appear to work. Invariably, someone will do something that others didn't see as an option to do and the others eyes will light up with a
Around day two or so, we will get into groups of 4-5, and give out pieces of paper with random things written on them. Umbrella, clown, hammer, comb, speaker, case of Mt Dew, really random stuff. From these, create as many ways to play the game as possible, Rube Goldberg style. Then you pick one and share it with the team as a whole. Lots of crazy things come out, but something will spark a thought for the realistic.
We send some adults to the remote kickoff and the kit of parts is usually back at the shop that afternoon. We immediately open it and inventory it, but not as a team. If there is cool new stuff, like a new motor, the word spreads quickly through the team, like we got a cool new present from Santa Kamen.
So a mix of the two. We teach the basics of the KOP during the fall, but the first few days after the game is announced learning the game is priority one.
Wetzel