[Bob Steele]

i am not sure where some of you are getting time spent.

Here is what I would consider a super MAXIMUM number of hours for six weeks...
I will state that this is TOO MUCH TIME to spend on any activity....

Five days a week 5 PM to 10 PM - 125 hours
Saturday 9 -9 12 hours - 72 hours
Sunday 9-9 12 hours - 72 hours

Max time 269 hours

This is pretty close to the 250 hour threshold.

i think this is really too much anyway....

Our schedule is 3 hours per night Monday through Thursday
and Saturday 9 to 4
This adds up to 114 hours per student...

We don't meet after school we meet each night from 6 until 9...
We sometimes add a Sunday or a Friday at the end of the season and occasionally we go until 10 the last 2 weeks.... this might add in another 40 hours or so .... but that is still something around 150 hours.


Those of you that are spending 300 hours plus...???? How do you do that?
The max schedule I have shown above is too much time.... it leaves no time for academics. or any other family life. If you figure that in six weeks the total time available is 1008 hours.... figure on sleeping at least 6 hours a night...252 hours 7 hours a day in school 210 hours.... 1. 5 hours a day to eat...110 hours...
1 hour per day for prep/shower/body functions..... 42 hours... this adds up to 614 hours... which leaves 394 hours...
If you spend 300 hours on robotics that leaves you exactly 94 hours for other things... or free/study/play time of 2.23 hours per day ...

of course you can cut out hours of sleep... but that will end up causing bigger problems...


I decided for our team that we would not come in on Sundays.... not for religious reasons but just to give everyone a day with the family and to get ready for classes for the next week...

We also have a "study table/ study hall" that goes from 3:30 PM to 5:00 PM every day we have a meeting during the week. This makes those normally unproductive hours immediately after school into a time that students can work academically. We do this as a team and studying together helps build a sense of team unity. At 5:00 many students eat together too... and then come back for the 6 oclock meeting. Every Wednesday parents provide a meal before the meeting and every Saturday a meal is brought in for lunch...

We meet in the evenings so we can get mentors to the meetings...

So I would be concerned as to what would count as hours at robotics?

For us we have a balance of somewhere around 150 hours of lab/shop/computer etc time directly devoted to team business... and we have another 40 hours or so of supervised study time...

Even after all of this that is less than 200 hours...

I don't think that schools need to institutionalize this however.... every team should figure out what is right for them... academics come first... I can't speak for family issues... but of course those must precede anything....

Our policy is if you can't maintain your grades you need to cut back until you do....

I am not sure what everyone is so worried about...

If you put in more than 250 hours of REAL time in robotics something is wrong...

I used to coach regular sports and a typical schedule would be about 3 hours a day in practice.
maybe 6 hours on Saturday....

this would give about 21 hours a week or 126 hours per six weeks....and that seemed like a lot!!


I am not sure how individual students can achieve more than 300 hours in the six weeks of build.
(I know it is a little more than 6 weeks ... 6 weeks and 2.5 days or so.... actually...)

that is averaging 50 hours a week... or over 7 hours per day working on the robot.

this seems to be extreme to me...