Does robotics attract the right students?

[davidthefat]

I do not mean "wrong" as in we are attracting bad kids, but we are attracting kids who already have a set goal of going into STEM. Aren't we trying to attract kids who are on the other end of the spectrum? My mentality was that majority of the kids on the team would have joined regardless of the mission as long as it had robots. I can confidently say majority of the students who are on robotics already had the vision to become engineers and scientists, or at least were entertaining the thought of it.

What can we do to attract kids other than those who already have a goal in STEM? I know there are teams with dedicated business, and other non "build" departments within the team. However, is that really fulfilling FIRST's mission? I noticed many of the students end up doing something non build related. I am in no way trying to put the build team up on a pedestal, but I do notice it, like with many others have. Are we doing the job correctly if 80% of the team is in the stands cheering with a handful of people in the pits working on the robot? I have never been a "non build" team member; I have always been a programmer and on the drive team. It breaks my heart to see kids feel "disposable"; hell, I am the lead programmer and I feel that way sometimes.

Are we allocating the jobs correctly? I know, not everyone was made to be a Programmer, Welder, Electrician or anything, but with the ~100 students who signed up for the team makes me worried. I know that all 100 will not show up, but a big chunk will. There are simply not enough jobs for that many kids, and I worry that many of them will be turned away from STEM for that.

[penguinfrk]

I had an interesting conversation about the self-selection of participants in extracurricular activities with an attorney who is running for state legislature come 2012.

Here are some statistics on the five public high schools in Bellevue, WA, all of which have FRC teams, taken from the Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI).

                        International(492)  Newport(948)	Bellevue(949)	Interlake(1899)	Sammamish(2412)
Years with team      	11                  9                  	9       	7       	5
Grad Rate              	100.0%              96.0%       	95.3%   	89.4%        	86.2%
Science test scores    	92.3%               80.1%        	74.9%       	69.1%        	51.4%
Teacher Experience (yr)	11                  12                	9       	10             	10
Student:Teacher Ratio  	16                  17                	18           	16      	13

The correlation between the years that the team has been in existence and the performance of the schools are pretty strong even while other factors such as teacher experience and student:teacher ratio have been relatively constant.

This suggests that whether or not students are on the team has no bearing on the fact that the presence of FIRST programs (or, at least FRC) enhances the educational environment of the schools.

---
Moreover, I personally don't agree with the self-selection thing, if for no other reason than that I personally was not a STEM fanatic when I first joined my FLL team.

I do think that peer pressure, in this case a fantastic thing, causes students who otherwise never would've joined a team to show up at meetings with their friends or boyfriends or what have you. Even if everyone in this group isn't all retained, there are undoubtedly many who become immersed in STEM.

[John]

Originally Posted by penguinfrk

This suggests that whether or not students are on the team has no bearing on the fact that the presence of FIRST programs (or, at least FRC) enhances the educational environment of the schools.

Do you have any data on the scores before FRC? Could the presence of FRC not be the cause of this correlation, instead could the correlation be the result of schools that were already committed to Science (and therefore likely to have better test scores anyway) being more likely to start FRC teams. This would seem especially likely if the scores have not changed much since the teams were started. Though if you can show the scores went up since then your point makes more sense.

[Chris Hibner]

We try to ask teachers in the school to identify students that would benefit from FIRST - typically the students that appear to have potential but may not be living up to it.

I think it's good to have a mix of students on the team. The overachiever types, the underachiever types, "in" crowd students, "out" crowd students, athletes, art students, etc. In that situation everyone learns a lot from the other students that they normally wouldn't hang out with, and hopefully some of the underinspired get a little inspiration from the alread-inspired (or at least they can see how the ambitious people operate).

[Carol]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

I can confidently say majority of the students who are on robotics already had the vision to become engineers and scientists, or at least were entertaining the thought of it.

The key part of your sentence is "at least were entertaining the thought of it". If being on a FIRST team can help those students decide, then it is worth it. Some may have thought about being an engineer (to use one example of a STEM career - they are others) but after time with FIRST realized that either they totally love engineering or that they really don't want to go into that field. Isn't it better that they find that out before college?

Also, students interested in nonSTEM careers can benefit as well, and not just from learning the basic skills of team dynamics, time scheduling, leadership, public speaking, etc., that can be learned from being on the team. We have had students on our team who have focused on web design, graphics, videography, and have gone to college to study these areas.

As for the problem of too many students on the team, well that is a separate problem. I bet this has already been discussed in other threads.

[Phyrxes]

I find it very rewarding to look at the collection of students in our shop and seeing students who are enrolled and succeeding in multiple AP classes working hand in hand with "at risk students" who are struggling to get through high school on a standard diploma.

Do they all want to be engineers? No, but many of them want to go into technical fields and providing them the opportunity to be exposed to project design and management before college is awesome.

Originally Posted by davidthefat

I do not mean "wrong" as in we are attracting bad kids, but we are attracting kids who already have a set goal of going into STEM. Aren't we trying to attract kids who are on the other end of the spectrum? My mentality was that majority of the kids on the team would have joined regardless of the mission as long as it had robots. I can confidently say majority of the students who are on robotics already had the vision to become engineers and scientists, or at least were entertaining the thought of it.

We are trying to get students into STEM, however we are also trying to teach the students who currently want to be engineers and scientists more than they would have learned without FIRST. Plus, it would be no fun to say "join our awesome robotics team, but only if you don't want to." IDK about your team(s), but for mine it's the people who already know they want to be an engineer or have been converted to becoming an engineer who go out and try to get the rest of the school interested.

What can we do to attract kids other than those who already have a goal in STEM? I know there are teams with dedicated business, and other non "build" departments within the team. However, is that really fulfilling FIRST's mission? I noticed many of the students end up doing something non build related. I am in no way trying to put the build team up on a pedestal, but I do notice it, like with many others have. Are we doing the job correctly if 80% of the team is in the stands cheering with a handful of people in the pits working on the robot? I have never been a "non build" team member; I have always been a programmer and on the drive team. It breaks my heart to see kids feel "disposable"; hell, I am the lead programmer and I feel that way sometimes.

I've seen this before. Heck, it's going on in my own team, and I feel the same way about it. It's not that the students don't already want to join, a lot of them just think they aren't the type of person for robotics, and then move on. You need to preach the ideas that: A) Robotics is a learning experience. You require no prior knowledge to join, an dew can guarantee that if you put your mind to it, you will become a first rate engineer on the team, and B) Robotics. is. fun. If there is any part of your team or the competition that isn't fun, then you are the one responsible for it, and it is your job to make it fun. If people on a team aren't having fun, then the team is doing something wring. FIRST makes these competitions the "hardest fun you will ever have". As for your view on the "disposable" student, your arguments with the students in the stands, and a few in the pits is how most competitions are. For us, we will only allow the key 10 people on our team in the pits. Everyone here can agree that the pits get full. Especially with a robot in there. BUT, the students in the stands have other important jobs. Scouting, cheering, all are important jobs the students in the stands have that make the team function.

Are we allocating the jobs correctly? I know, not everyone was made to be a Programmer, Welder, Electrician or anything, but with the ~100 students who signed up for the team makes me worried. I know that all 100 will not show up, but a big chunk will. There are simply not enough jobs for that many kids, and I worry that many of them will be turned away from STEM for that.

With us, we also had a lot of people sign up, and we are currently addressing the issues of our large numbers right now. IMO, there are 3 types of teams when regarding the amount of students on a team. There are those who have 5 or 6 students, who are desperately in need of more, since all of the work is put on the 5 or 6 students. There are those who have anywhere from 20 to 30, and work well on each thing they do without a problem, and then there are those who have 50+ students. Personally, I think anywhere above 40 students is WAY too much. You can only have so many people working on a robot at once, so many programmers, so many builders, and just the right amount of electrical, before you start getting people who don't have jobs. And sometimes, it's just the time of year you're in. In the fall, we get tons of new people who want to build robots, but when we start to prepare for off seasons, they realize that the robot is already built, and there is very little for them to do. In this case, you must stress to them that you will all be busy in the actual build season. If you are in build season with people who don't have jobs to do, then you have too many students.

Hope this helped!

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

I do not mean "wrong" as in we are attracting bad kids, but we are attracting kids who already have a set goal of going into STEM. Aren't we trying to attract kids who are on the other end of the spectrum? My mentality was that majority of the kids on the team would have joined regardless of the mission as long as it had robots. I can confidently say majority of the students who are on robotics already had the vision to become engineers and scientists, or at least were entertaining the thought of it.

While this is true to some degree, there are also many kids who join who were not planning on going into STEM... the problem is, you don't ask them ahead of time! I can tell you, without a doubt, that many of the kids we recruit for our team were not already set for STEM. In fact, one of our best graduates (majoring in Electrical Engineering), had been planning on studying business before she joined the team.

What can we do to attract kids other than those who already have a goal in STEM? I know there are teams with dedicated business, and other non "build" departments within the team. However, is that really fulfilling FIRST's mission? I noticed many of the students end up doing something non build related. I am in no way trying to put the build team up on a pedestal, but I do notice it, like with many others have. Are we doing the job correctly if 80% of the team is in the stands cheering with a handful of people in the pits working on the robot? I have never been a "non build" team member; I have always been a programmer and on the drive team. It breaks my heart to see kids feel "disposable"; hell, I am the lead programmer and I feel that way sometimes.

You can only fit so many people around the robot at once... if you have 100 kids, then yes, you need to spread out your jobs a little, and many of them may not touch the robot. But that's part of the beauty of FIRST - There's so much more for students to do than build a robot. You can have a team focused on animation, another focused on CAD, one focused on PR, one focused on fundraising, one focused on the website... in short, there's something there for everyone to do. And quite frankly, it really doesn't matter if you have someone on the team who doesn't want to work on the robot - if they spend all their time working on PR or managing the team's finances because that's what they like doing, then it helps to give them valuable experience that they'll use down the road.

We graduated 6 this past year, and all of them were profoundly impacted by what they did on the team - and some of them never worked on the robot! It was amazing to see them all considering majors that related to the areas of the team they worked with.

Are we allocating the jobs correctly? I know, not everyone was made to be a Programmer, Welder, Electrician or anything, but with the ~100 students who signed up for the team makes me worried. I know that all 100 will not show up, but a big chunk will. There are simply not enough jobs for that many kids, and I worry that many of them will be turned away from STEM for that.

If you don't have enough jobs for everyone, then it's time to expand your program. Go after all those awards that don't have to do with the robot. Dedicate two build teams and build yourself a practice bot. Spin off a "JV" team to participate in the Vex challenge. Dedicate someone on the team as a project manager, and his/her sole job would be to ensure that everyone has a meaningful job they enjoy.

What Eagle33199 said. Either make your program bigger, or make your amount of students smaller. As a quote from Karthik, "Always work within your means". It's pretty self explanatory, so I think you know what to do from here.

[trilogy2826]

Let's assume for the sake of discussion a hypothetical situation in which 100% of your students that signed up for the team (1 or 100, doesn't matter) already were unequivocally convinced that they wanted to be an engineer since the age of 5 and have already signed up for their college of choice by the time they joined the team. The fact in this situation is that even if you aren't "converting" non-STEM students into STEM junkies, you are providing them with an experience and education that they will not get elsewhere. At least once a week, I hear students on our team that are undeniably good at math and science comment about learning something new in the implementation of math and science. We have statistics from even our short 3 years in FRC that show that even the already STEM focused students benefited to some extent from our program. Basically, IMHO, in the end the mix of students isn't as important as spreading the word of FIRST and giving the student a unique experience.

[Jared Russell]

These are good questions, and they are worth discussing.

First off, here is FIRST's Mission Statement, which I think helps to answer your questions:

Originally Posted by FIRST

Our mission is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in
exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire
innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and
leadership.

Originally Posted by davidthefat

Aren't we trying to attract kids who are on the other end of the spectrum?

"Other end of the spectrum" may not be the best way to put it. Some people - most people - simply are not going to be engineers for one reason or another. Not their cup of tea. The idea isn't to persuade everyone. It is rather, as Carol said, to help swing the students who either didn't know about engineering as a career, or weren't sure of engineering as a career, to pursue the profession after high school. As a result, teams made up only of students who were already decided on engineering have a ceiling on the impact they can possibly make. Still, even engineering-tracked students can benefit from participation (real world project and teamwork experience, technical experience with relevant technologies at an early level, resume builder, etc.)

Originally Posted by davidthefat

What can we do to attract kids other than those who already have a goal in STEM?

FIRST is actually all about trickery! Many students join because of the travel, the fun of competition, but end up getting inspired once they get "hooked". You just need to get them through the door. Giving students other avenues for joining the team to all sorts of wonderful things. People join the website team, and end up becoming professional engineers (case in point: Me). People join the Chairman's team and end up pursuing engineering. If you have the bandwidth, having non-technical subteams is a great way to attract students who may be turned off by the "nuts and bolts" at first. Especially, in my experience, females.

Originally Posted by davidthefat

However, is that really fulfilling FIRST's mission?

Yes. Look at FIRST's Mission Statement. "Science and technology leaders" are engineers, but also 3D modelers, website designers, technical communicators, technical entrepreneurs, etc. There are plenty of "non-build" ways to fulfill this vision.

Originally Posted by davidthefat

Are we doing the job correctly if 80% of the team is in the stands cheering with a handful of people in the pits working on the robot? Are we allocating the jobs correctly?

I would say the answer depends on the 80%. Have they been inspired? Learned new skills? Considering pursuing careers in science and technology related fields? Even if they aren't, do they have a newfound appreciation and respect for science and technology? If yes, then you are doing your job correctly. You can only fit so many people in the pits. Still, 100 students sounds pretty overwhelming to me. You need a LOT of mentorship to steer a herd that large.

[JesseK]

IMO FRC teams pragmatically generate, at best, better problem solvers. It doesn't matter if the student is an English major in college because he/she was on the CA team or business team. Being motivated to participate and succeed in a large-scale project is what benefits any student, regardless of that student's educational background. Better problem solvers nets us a better-prepared employment force that can handle changes in industry, ergo can keep themselves employed (and on a more selfish note, will keep my 401k portfolio from tanking every few years...).

Yet regarding producing new Engineers -- I recall reading a study where most engineers in college were already curious or motivated to enter engineering before they entered high school. I'll have to find the article. In practice, this seems to hold true since our team has had much better recruiting opportunities with the kids we (and by extension, the county) have already inspired with FLL/VEX/SeaPerch at the lower grades.

This engineer recruitment cycle may seem like we're taking the 'easy' road by not trying to recruit high students who aren't already interested in engineering -- yet we don't see it that way. We see it as simply inspiring new engineers at a younger age, then using our robotics programs to better prepare them for hard problem solving, with the hope that most of them will continue on to engineering as a career. Additionally, many of the high school students recruit their friends, and also go to the FLL teams and mentor them, creating a sort of organic self-sustaining generator of new engineers. It works for us, and tbh I'm glad we have the problem of 'too many applicants' every year.

[E. Wood]

The students that I work with never touch the robot. They instead write the award submissions, spec sheets, and outreach programs for our team. Many of them are insanely talented in graphics and other arts. Yes many of them also simply cheer on the team at competition when they aren't giving presentation or talking to other teams or judges but so what, that’s exactly what everyone on the robots side does when they aren’t driving or fixing the bot. The big question is, what does this have to do with FIRST's mission?

These students, who may not have had an understanding of what science and technology can do for them now have appreciation of it. They get why it’s important for everyone to study STEM even if they are not planning on going into a STEM field. They understand how studying STEM can lead to more creative and innovative students in all fields of study. I ask you this... how many of the world’s great innovation were developed from ideas presented first by writers and artists. Here's a hint, watch Star Wars or Star Trek and read some Julies Verne and keep a notebook as you will need it to keep track.

[gblake]

There is more to the STEM robotics domain than FRC. FIRST has more programs and there are other completely separate programs.

If anyone connected to an FRC team wants to attract a more diverse set of students, or wants to influence students who aren't already pointed toward a STEM career; I recommend either finding some way to get them onto that FRC team, or convincing them to try a semi-relaxed 3-month stint on a VRC team, or try coding up a good BotBall entry, or....

The question, as it is posed is really an ill-formed question. It mashes together an assumption that FRC is the only program under discussion, that it is the FRC program's job to attract the "right" students, and that the influence of local circumstances is less important than the program's features.

I do agree that David raises an important point, but the topic is so tangled up in program-type, and local circumstances that useful answers (instead of useful suggestions) are very hard to come by if the questions and ensuing discussions aren't carefully structured. There are way too many variables involved for a broadly framed question to have an answer other than "It depends."

On the other hand, the door is wide open for plenty of useful suggestions for ways to attract many types of students into whatever STEM program is right for the students in question. Some folks have already posted them. Personally I'm a fan of using the lower-cost and highly-accessible VRC and FTC sorts of programs to involve/attract as many students as possible, and then building bigger-budget (assuming the "community" is engaged and supportive) programs on top of the solid foundation created by them.

To David's point, and speaking broadly and in metaphors; I think a walk, then trot, then run approach; will wind up attacting more students of all stripes than trying to start off running. Pyramids are more stable, and enclose more volume, than towers.

Blake

[iVanDuzer]

What can we do to attract kids other than those who already have a goal in STEM?

You don't need to. You've mentioned that you're afraid that there won't be enough STEM related jobs for your teammates. So so what if there aren't? Is it so bad if these students don't go into STEM? Every student that becomes involved in FIRST helps FIRST's goals... even if they've never touched a robot.

This made me think about something that happened to me recently. I was wearing my old team sweater and a stranger came up to me and started talking about FIRST. One of the first things she asked me was where was my purple jacket (at my university, almost all the engineering students get leather jackets and dye them purple). When I said that I don't have one because I'm studying Film and English, she was confused. "But you were in FIRST!"

This in turn made me think: am I a "failed FIRST student" because I wasn't "inspired" enough to become an engineer? I would say no.

I got into FIRST because I was a member of my elementary school's LEGO robotics club. I had fun. So I joined FRC in grade 9. I decided the next year to forgo working on the robot in order to work on awards and scouting. I decided building wasn't my thing, so I did something else. And now I'm studying Film.

This quote sums up what FIRST is all about:

"To transform our culture by creating a world where science and technology are celebrated and where young people dream of becoming science and technology leaders."

Dean Kamen, Founder

I may not have chosen engineering as a career, but I definitely still celebrate science and technology. I'm still involved in FIRST, mentoring a local team. If anyone gives me the chance, I talk about FIRST for hours. And in my mind, that's just as important as creating lots and lots of engineers.

Only a select part of the population can be employed as engineers, just like only a select part of the team can work on the robot. But these people who aren't working on the robot are just as if not more important to changing the culture than the students who become engineers are.

Just because a student can't work on a robot and therefore doesn't become inspired to become an engineer (or turn away from STEM) doesn't mean that they have failed FIRST. Instead, they are spreading it into areas that otherwise wouldn't be concerned with FIRST at all (like Film and English students )