Quote:
Originally Posted by Abwehr
254 is one of the teams blessed with a cadre of amazing volunteers. My team is another. But many teams - and especially newer teams - simply aren't there yet.
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Another post has pointed out that 254 specifically does not have a plethora of engineers. I'd suggest that any team that does, find one of the have-nots and loan them an engineer or two, for a Saturday afternoon or the whole season if need be.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 1885.Blake
Whether the original author realized it or not, making a point about students vs mentors in the pits (and extrapolating backwards from that point into the build season) was the core of the original comment. Let's please temporarily forget that the author muddied up the water by extrapolating forward from the pit situation to winning/losing on the field.
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The first time I ever saw a FIRST pit was in Houston, when FLL was allocated a crowded corner of the Astro Dome. Coming from FLL, where students are supposed to do all the work, and seeing a pit with 6 individuals, the 2 students holding up the robot so the 4 mentors could work on whatever was broken - let's just say I was less than impressed. I have since come to realize that may have been an isolated event at competition. Not isolated in that I've never seen it again. But isolated in that it happens at competitions. Time constraints often dictate that the best person must work on the robot to get it fixed, and we've only got 20 minutes before we have to be headed to the Queue. That doesn't mean the students never worked on the robot and only watched or held parts for 6-1/2 weeks. While there may be such a team around, I'd guess that even the most mentor-oriented teams don't fall into a 100%/0% built ratio.
Someone mentioned design as being a favorite part. In my opinion, students absolutely must be involved in the first aspect of design - concepts. A team needs to use all the minds available to come up with all the ideas possible. Students and mentors alike need to be part of brainstorming sessions. Decide what part of the game is most important. Define what you want the robot to be able to do.
Then go on to the next part of design - figure out how to build it. Here, mentoring might be most important. Mentors have a history of knowing what has worked in the past and what hasn't. Teams can save weeks of useless effort wandering aimlessly toward an unknown design goal. It doesn't have to be a mentor's idea - a student might come up with, "Remember how Team X did it at Y Regional two years ago?" The concepts a team wishes to execute have to be based in solid engineering principles, or you'll have a bucket of parts that keep falling off. Mentors most often, not always but most often, have the experience that will help guide the team in the correct direction.
One of the most satisfying times for Team 1025's parent and engineering mentors was a weekend afternoon midway through build season. We sat in chairs in a semi-circle as students in several groups worked on multiple projects, for the robot, pit and Chairmans. We were happy to let them run without intervention for a couple of hours at least. 9 of those 14 students will be graduating this year, so maybe next year there won't be an opportunity like that. The team may need more hands-on mentoring by showing rather than mentoring by monitoring. But for that day, it clicked. Oh yes, one of the groups was working on our unique arm/tower design that was designed by one of the mentors.