Curriculum Design

[CJmango]

Originally Posted by MysterE

Hi all -

I've been working on determining which curriculum to use for a Robotics course that I want to offer next year. My first inclination is to use a VEX curriculum that makes use of RobotC. The question I have is how well will the skills learned in VEX transfer to FRC?

-Daniel

Especially if you are hoping to transfer skills to FRC, why wouldn't you be considering FTC? There is much more to FIRST than the engineering skills and FTC encourages those additional skill-sets. It is also much more well integrated with the community and more supportive of the student-mentor relationship. FTC does support RobotC as well as LabView, which is an extremely common tool in academia and research. As the other reply indicated, the mechanical and likely electrical concepts will otherwise be remain very similar.

If you're only looking for a platform it probably doesn't matter, there are actually plenty of more cost effective options than either, but if you're hoping to educate students, FTC is the way to go. They also do have curriculum developed and it would not be difficult to obtain a copy.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by CJmango

Especially if you are hoping to transfer skills to FRC, why wouldn't you be considering FTC? There is much more to FIRST than the engineering skills and FTC encourages those additional skill-sets. It is also much more well integrated with the community and more supportive of the student-mentor relationship. FTC does support RobotC as well as LabView, which is an extremely common tool in academia and research. As the other reply indicated, the mechanical and likely electrical concepts will otherwise be remain very similar.

If you're only looking for a platform it probably doesn't matter, there are actually plenty of more cost effective options than either, but if you're hoping to educate students, FTC is the way to go. They also do have curriculum developed and it would not be difficult to obtain a copy.

Vex is a superior choice all around when compared to FTC. The cost is far lower, the components are of higher quality, it's easier and more intuitive to setup, and there are more competitions and curriculum.

[EricH]

Before this gets off into an Tetrix/FTC vs VEX/VRC debate...

Just remember that VEX was originally developed for FRC teams to use in prototyping, way way back in the day (OK, so it hasn't quite been a decade yet). VEX is cheaper; the strength is at least comparable between the two (unless you're talking about motors that are (mis)used in FRC); both have curriculum. Competitions could be a factor; some areas seem to have better VRC coverage, while others seem to have better FTC coverage.

With those things considered, it's the choice of the educator which curriculum is chosen.

With respect to the original question, they should transfer just fine. It's just a bit bigger of a machine...

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Daniel,
If this adds any weight to the discussion, VEX has been adopted by Project Lead The Way for their curriculum.

[DonRotolo]

Slightly off-topic, but SparkFun is developing a robotics & technology curriculum that may be worthwhile for some teams.