Quote:
Originally Posted by Woody1458
I think it is totally appropriate for an adult to do it the students way even if its the wrong way. Because the fact is that you never understand that something doesn't work until you see why it doesn't work. Being told that a way is wrong make have them do it the right way once, but later in life when something like a job is a stake that will never have seen the "wrong" way fail so they will do it that way and face the consequences.
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This is where there's a fine balancing act by the mentors....how much should you allow the students to fail, so they learn things on their own? How much should you teach by telling the students that the design won't work based on your own past experiences and engineering knowledge?
I know that this year I let several things slide that I had suggested the students do to the robot, and the robot quit working several times because those things weren't done. Seems to me the students were more disappointed about the poor robot performance, than they would have been about having me do that stuff to the robot. I don't know how your own students would react to this situation, though.
It's tough for the mentors to know how much to do....on top of that, building robots is about the most fun engineering work there is, so keeping our hands off is a serious challenge!
On a more positive note, I think this year went very well for our team as far as dividing up the workload, and our students having a very good feel for what they could accomplish on their own, and what they could use help with. I know I learned a lot from the students too, I was very fortunate to be able to help them bring their very good ideas to life by helping quite a bit with the engineering of the robot.