[Ben Mitchell]

(Who cares that it's an anonymous account?)

From a personal perspective, I'd rather have a student dominated team than one with a lot of hands-on mentors.

I think students learn more by doing things themselves, and in addition, can be proud of what they have done. I think some teams go a little overboard with adult mentors.

My personal philosophy is that adults should be there to teach. I do not use a tool unless it is to show a student how to use it. If I am ever to run a FIRST team, that will be a rule for all adults.

Some teams have large budgets, some teams have very limited resources. That is not something that can be controlled. The playing field is not level. Even with the best strategy in the world, teams that can have every part of the robot designed by professionals and CNCed to a tenth of a millimeter have an advantage over a low-budget team working in the high school wood shop, fundraising each year to make funds for next year's entry fee.

That being said, my advice would be to get what you can out of the program: what you get out is what you put in. After competition, dismantle your robot and build a new one to do something else - practice building and programming and wiring things up. That's how students learn, and that, at least, is my objective. I would rather have a student built, low budget robot that students can honestly, truly say that they have worked hard on and built, than have a “high-quality” robot that goes to three regionals and wins matches, yet was put together by adults who were interacting minimally with students. It reminds me of student work that was obviously done by the parent who then tries to tell their child that they should be proud of the project as if the child did the work.

Ownership is more important than anything - if students own something, they can be proud of it, no matter what it looks like or how it functions. If the students don't own it, than the project is a charade. A big, expensive homework assignment getting turned in for a grade rather than being done for the sake of learning. If the students are capable of doing it themselves, they should be. If they are not, then a mentor should teach them so they can do it next time, or if that is not possible, then teach them so they understand, so that in the hypothetical situation where they would need to do that process, they would. Getting the students involved in any capacity is what the program, from a broad perspective, is about.

The program is not about kids building robots.

The mentors versus students argument is so dependent on circumstances and individuals that it's impossible to come at it with anything beyond a personal philosophy of how you want things run.

I would not say that the students who have a lot of support and mentors dominating the team are learning more, though they have the potential to. If adults have dirty hands at the end of the day and students are not involved, or are involved only in the periphery, then I would say that something is not right and that team should take a step back and reevaluate their priorities. I think students gain a lot more by doing it themselves: the worst case scenario is failure, and if mentors act like a safety net, that won't happen. That is my philosophy.

Sure, some teams have the advantages of a massive budget or a team of designers, and having those teams in the same competition as teams scavenging parts out of the junk heap makes the competition, taken at face value, very uneven. I think the biggest point that the original poster was striking here is the disparity between team resources. Part of this is alleviated by material and money restrictions, but those are easily bypassed – the result is an uneven playing field, in which resources play a larger part in determining the outcome of the season than designing and engineering.

However, that is the nature of this competition. This isn’t a question of GP – there is no GP. GP is an invented term with a subjective definition. It isn’t real – it exists only as an overarching construct that people can use to guide their actions and their mentalities. GP only applies to you and no one else. This goes for everyone. It shouldn't be used as a shield or a weapon. This also goes for everyone. It is a threadbare and tattered banner that need not be waved around so casually. In my opinion it shouldn't be waved at all. Telling people what they are doing is or is not GP is like arguing over religion. Completely pointless.

That being said, the nature of the competition will not change, and trying to change it is like trying to change the course of a river with a grapefruit spoon and a bucket. Concentrate on making the most of what you have and learning for it's own sake. Try and pick up some scholarship money too. There is no solution to the issues that were aired in the original post.

As another note to this whole mentor and student thing: mentors are important to teach students how to do things Mentors are hugely important to help students learn...by teaching them. Although I feel that students should do the majority of the design and work on the robot, they need some guiding light or they will get lost. What I am against is a team of mentors making decisions that override the wishes and ideas of the students. That contradicts my philosophy of "ownership." I've been in that situation some years ago and it wasn't a good experience for me as a student.

Successful teams aren't just successful because they have resources. A lot of them, in fact probably most of them, would be successful and do what they are doing even without something like the chairman's award to shoot for. It's not right to look at successful teams as products of their sponsorship or mentors. Teams need mentors in some form or another - even if they aren't real-life engineers. Some of the best mentors I've had in FIRST didn't belong to companies or hold engineering degrees. Some teams can't machine things, as noted above. In which case the robot would need to be built without student hands, but there’s a lot more going on than the robot.

I wouldn't get hung up on the competition.

At least that is my perspective.