Qotw [12-01-02]: policy on students...

[Ken Leung]

Hi all. I was looking around the forum for questions people like to ask, and came across the bunch of threads started by students on team 180 asking for contact info, and remembered how their team use test to decide who stays on the team and who doesn’t. That reminded me of some conversations I had with different people about how “only the hardworking students get to be driver/go to Florida”, or like “students who don’t do anything can’t stay in the workshop”, etc. That made me wonder what teams across the country to about students and how much they do. Do you punish students for distracting others? Do you award hard working students? Do you let everyone interested join the team? With that in mind, here is the question of the week…

Questions 12/01/02: What team policies do you have regarding students and their behavior?

It can be any policies related to member recruitment and how you pick who gets in the team, or your award/punishment system to make sure students work hard. How about a selection process for drivers? Or the crew going to Championship event?

Oh yeah, one more thing. Is there a better name for "student policy"?

Have fun!

-Ken L

[Aaron Lussier]

Altought we don't call it a student policy and its not really written down anywhere. The veterans on our team take on the responsiblity of weeding out the students who really don't want to be there. We do this by first talking to themabout the amoun of time they should put in. Then for the diffrent teams: mech and controls. We give all the new people the crappy jobs like sorting hardware and filings stuff that really does not have to be filed. If we find any students using materials from our storgage room to make something that hasent been authorized by at least one other veteran member then we warn them about doing it, if they do it again there gone.

Everybody who is intrested in our team we let join, this year that added up to over 140 students Throught team building and other activites we have cut that number down to about 90. From here we are going to start really pressuring them to take responsiblity on the team in some form or another. Throught this phase last year we dropped another 30 kids. Then through out the six weeks most likelyre are going to drop another 20-30 leaving us with just the students who each have there own job on the tam and no students who just sit around and do nothing.

It seems to be a pretty good system, I had to go through it to earn respect from the vets and now I'm doing the same, now that I'm a senior member.

[Ashley Weed]

well.... my first two years.... basically you did very little... the veterans were sorta 'in charge', and you respected them. If you were well behaved, not abnoxius, and showed interest you were fine. Only Seniors were on the floor team... my freshman year, if you looked at the robot, you better start running before the driver even saw you. Only upperclassmen, mostly Seniors, were aloud to stay overnight to help.

last year, we didn't have 'seniority' on the team... a lot of people sat around socializing all of the time. A few of us (3) worked mad hours 400+, and attended all sponsor and community events. However, underclassmen who didn't do anything during the first five weeks, decided they wanted to stay overnight with us (all they did was play games, then get in the way).

so far this year, it looks like a repeat of last year. We had a lot of people show up for team building. It was supposed to be mandatory, and if you didn't show up then you couldn't be on the team. Well, at the meeting after that, we had like 6 more people show up who wanted to join. Some students on the team (veterans) and some of the newbies enjoy harrassing the floor team, and tell us that they are going to take our jobs. They also think that they could do a better job than us (see my sig banner for all that our floor team accomplished).

.... hoping that time speeds up.....

[purplehaze357]

Well....our team policy in the begining of every season was we would take anybody that would come and put the effort in that is needed.....which it still is to a point, but to weed out the kids that were there for trips or just to spend time with their buddies we would first talk ab the time that is involved with the team....and the kind of commitment we're looking for in our members (that usually takes ab half the group out right there)...

Once your on the "team" that does not neccissarily garuntee you travel rights, you have to earn your way there by participating in fundraising events, the robot design above and beyond the call of duty, the adults decide on this..

To become part of the travel team you need to also display a positive attitude and willingness to help, doing whatever is assigned to do, qwhich means you have to be coachable and approachable, just because you show up to every meeting doesnt mean your going to make the travel team, because if you have a bad attitude, you're flagged right away....

**edit**
driving last year's robot was basicly senority after some tryouts, and it came down to the senior member on our team that has been here since the begining and another 3 year Junior...when our senior couldnt make it it went down the senority lines and i got to drive....so driving seems to be seniority, as long as u can drive (having practiced)
**edit**

[Ryan Foley]

heres how we on 350 do it.
First of all, anyone may join, we cant stop them from joining.
The following factors determine who gets the higest, most responsible roles/ or jobs (in order of importance):
1. productivity (how much work you do)
2. attitude (whether you actually want to be there and do work, or you are just there so you can be with your buddies or you just want to operate the robot)
3. experience (skill is part of this category when it is applicable)
4. maturity
5. seniority

right now this is used for determining who ets the higher jobs/ roles.
Eventually i hope to institue some rules that if a person does not pull their weight, or is causing other major problems to the team they are either off the team or not allowed to travel. This is because people who dont pull their weight or cause other problems (being a jerk to everyone, among other things) ruins the teams experience, which is not a good thing, as providing the team with a good experience is our main goal.

usually, the six weeks from january to february weeds out a lot of the non-productive, bad-attitude people.

[hacksaw692]

we're usually open to just about anyone willing to join. we're not exactly popular among the student body (it's hard to entice an all girl populus). oh! they know we're there and they commend us for our efforts, the interest is sort of lacking. so, just about anyone willing to get their hands dirty or help out is accepted with open arms.

from there, the team just natually starts to thin out. we started with about 20 interested girls last year, that shrank down to 15. this year we had about 30 more people sign up, plus the 10 or so veterans. the team size shrank considerably to about 25 i'd say. the roster isn't finalized yet. we're still looking for more recruits though. we need a stronger underclassman base because the seniors on the team are the majority. there needs to be a good established team for next year.

now, deciding on who actually gets to stay is kinda debatable. since last year, we (the current officers) had a very big problem with all the people who didn't pull their weight around. we didn't want to have something like that happen again, so we decided to write up a constitution. said constitution isn't done yet and i think it's taking too long. the season is almost here, and i'm thinking of just putting that off for next year's team, observe this year and learn from that.

we are trying to establish basic rules. we have a new moderator this year, and she runs things a bit differently from how our old moderator ran things. i think we're going for a "check in/check out" system. i suppose, if a person doesn't put in enough hours come competition, they're not going, but even that isn't finalized. grades are going to be another thing for membership. we have finals three weeks into building (argh! too many tests). so, it's best to find out who isn't doing too well and have them leave, because we don't want to have the team interfearing with grades and such. school is far more important.

other than membership, priviages are, more or less, granted based on abilities. we chose the best drivers we have. last year there was only one senior on the team, so driving was open to the rest of the team, but decided on by the adults. this year, we have more seniors, and i'm thinking of havinging it only open to them, but it depends on who wants to drive. pit crew will be picked based on abilities. anything else just kind of taken as it comes.

our "student policy" isn't much at the moment. we're still working on it, but i'm open to any suggestions on how to improve it.

[Warren Boudreau]

During the early years of Team SPAM, we would take anyone who was even slightly interested. Then again, that was when we struggled to find 20 students interested.

That worked until last year when we had more than 50 students going in to the build season. We had to make a cut off based on time, but found that many students were left out that maybe shouldn't have been.

This year we had over 100 students, initially. Therefore, we are trying a different approach. Students who choose not to participate in pre-season functions (fundraising, meetings, etc.) are first dropped. To travel to the competitions, students have to meet some basic requirements and then have to vie for work assignments on the travel team. Basic requirements are adequate grades, and at least 50% participation.

I don't know how well this will work. We are trying to be fair to anyone interested in being on the team and willing to work. I guess we'll find out at the end of the year when the students get a chance to tell me what a lousy job I did as team leader.

[Joe Matt]

We never have set up anything because all of our students have alwasy behaved. Sure, some people out of the norm, but those are handeled on a case by case basis.

[Ken Leung]

Thanks for replying guys. Seems like every team have different policies depending on their situations. Some have very few members that they have to have everyone remain on the team... Some have lots of people interested that its not possible to allow everyone on the team.

From my past experience and from what I saw at other teams... Having a policy on students means some sort of discipline system where you award the hard workers and punish the slackers. It’s useful in the way that you are making sure your team is as productive as possible. It creative an incentive for students to work hard, and it stop slackers from staying around distracting people. Its just good practice when you are taking the job of running a team seriously, and at that point, it changed from being a club of students into more of a class like structure.

And then there are different situations where the robotics teams ARE classes in school, and so the teacher have to some how figure out a way to give grades to the students. Then, at that point, a policy is necessary.

Sometimes, when there is no main teacher on the team, and the team is more club orientated, it is hard to implement a policy, because some of the people won’t like it just because they don’t do as much. As a result, they won’t agree with what the team decided to do, and cause more troubles then before, maybe even split off and form another team. It’s a very tricky thing… Especially for rookie teams who are still forming the way their team would function.


Speaking of which, how do you guys determine if a student is hard working or not? Do you give tests to the students? Do you hand out assignments? Do you have projects which you would grade after everyone is finished?

[Gadget470]

247 is now in it's 5th year.

Rookie: It was a club of 7 students, all worked hard and all were able to travel. There wasn't any restrictions

Second(My first year): This year it became an actual class and also the "Yowchuang Fan Club." Which we dubbed our group that stayed at lunch to just hang out, named after our coach Mr. Yowchuang. Everyone had an equal chance to be on the travel team. The team consisted of 24 members, those who didn't go to competitions was because they had prior engagements.

Third: This year the class exploded into 44 members, many of them Freshman who heard that the team "Goes to Disney" so they signed up. The 'Travel Team' ended up being about 26 students and was decided based on how much work they had put into the team. 247 has never been a team with an abundance of money, so we've done a lot of fundraisers. Mr. Yowchuang was at every one of them and knew who had been consistantly showing up. He then conversed with the "Yowchuang Fan Club" about the decisions (in cas.e there were some that deserved to be on the list that were not)

Fourth: Last year, Mr. Yowchuang left for personal reasons and Mr. Goldberg (from team 65 Huskie Brigade) became our new teacher/coach. The class had approximently 40 students and 24 was being the set number for travel team. Many of the students didn't work in the class setting and thus were not on the travel team. By the time the real FIRST season came about the class had about 30 people. Nobody was specifically refused for being on the Travel Team because 8 were either not able to be on the Travel Team (for various reasons) or dropped.

Fifth: This time around the fundraising policy has changed. We all start the year with -1,200 in our Travel Account which we need to balance up to 0. Each fundraiser we do 75% of the profits gets split equally into those whom participated's accounts. The other 25% goes to the team's general fund (for jerseys, supplies, equipment, etc). At 4 'check points' in the year we need to have $300, $600, $900, $1200 in our accounts. The amount we have is determined by how much we've raised plus personal deposit. i.e. If we raise $120 into our account at the first checkpoint we need to turn in a check for $180 to balance to $300. The class has about 23 people in it I think and most won't be on the travel due to the way the team is run this year. At this first checkpoint the average amount in each person's account was about $80-$100. I don't know how many people will be able to afford upwards of $900 to be on the team for this year. I know I can't.

[whiskas]

We're #1156 from Brazil. That's southern hemisphere ( duh! ), which means it's summer when you guys are in winter. That also means our kids are in their summer vacations during build phase.

We've been under some pressure to define a rule, before the season actually starts, as to who gets to go. Some of them aren't really willing to drop 2 months in the seashore with beaches and all and then get the news that "sorry, but we picked Joe instead".

I'll probably part of the staff that does the "picking", and I already feel bad about not being able to take everyone ( which we are trying, but a $50k budget seems far-from-possible at this point ). Right now we're aiming at taking, at the most, 10+staff to the Nationals ( out of a 20-25 student count ).

thanks for the input

[Brett W]

We have a "Board of Justice". It consists of 5 senior level members who have showed great devotion to the team in previous years. THey have a meeting every week to discuss team progress and the students themselves. if there is a problem with the student we simply sit them infrond of the "Board of Justice" and solve the problem. It is really scary to face the Board of justice. 5 people older than you, sitting on the other side of the table staring at you and interogating you. It is strict but it works. It has been nicknamed "Board of doom", "Board of Death" "Board of Judgment" etc.

The student who don't have to pay a visit to the board of justice and act good throught the year get a chance of being voted into the next years "Board of Justice" which is another incentive to behave.
That is how we control the teams behavior.