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Matt/Greg,
You bring up some good points. If I read this right, you are agreeing in saying that it is difficult at best for the students to try to put something together on their own, but that they can with help. At what point do you think that the students can begin taking ownership of something, and become the teachers? In our old team only seniors were allowed on the team (which I thought was silly), so this will be our first time of having repeat customers, so to speak. I'm interested in what teams have done long term to keep the student interest high. What I'd ultimately like to do is have some design component, however small, be done entirely by the students, though it would probably be the "older" team members (those that have been around 3+ years, with a select few who are around for their second year).
One of my concerns is student retention. We have a pretty agressive fall program that was a carry over from out 128 days. What happens when a student sees the same thing 3 time? I can't make the labs more challenging, or I loose the new students. I can't run separate sessions, or I add division to the team. I'd probablly like to have the older students run some of the labs - that might take care of the issue somewhat. But...then this just carries through into the winter - I don't want to push the girls so much that they get burnt out, and to the point where we don't turn out a quality product. But... at the same time I don't want to dumb things down to the point where the girls loose interest. How have people remedied this in the past? Or, is this a non-issue?
Erik
(PS - we are also an all college student team (with the exception of 3 parents that help out and do some great work for us) - I just have a gripe about the "college student is not an engineer" designation, espeically for older college students - I've met plenty of people with engineer in their job title that don't have engineering degrees...... but that's a whole different topic that I'd rather not get in to)
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