Does robotics attract the right students?

[smurfgirl]

I think each team bears the responsibility of bringing in and engaging a variety of students who will benefit FIRST. In my experience, I can say that FIRST is attracting people who benefit from the program - I have seen this from my own FIRST experience and from working with others. Engineering, for the most part, is not visible as a career option to most young people. FIRST makes it visible and attractive to both students who entered the program with and without prior interest in math and science.

When I joined my school's team, I was interested in math and science, but had never heard of engineering and had certainly never considered it as a career option. Robotics sounded cool, but I wasn't sure if I was knowledgeable enough to be able to actually contribute. There were wonderful mentors on the team who pushed me to get involved in hands-on work and actually building things, whereas I might have been too shy and unsure of myself to jump into those things myself. Meetings were right after one of my dance classes, and my dad will still tell you that he was initially surprised to see me come home dressed as a ballerina but covered in grease, talking about how I got to help build a transmission. It didn't take long for me to get hooked on FIRST, or to discover that engineering was actually really awesome and exactly what I wanted to apply my interest in math and science to. I am a FIRST success story. Without FIRST, I likely never would have discovered an interest in engineering or applied to schools to study engineering. Now, I will be graduating from MIT this spring with a BS in Materials Science and Engineering, and I will be going to work for Pratt & Whitney as an engineer.

I have seen similar stories among my peers on my team and others, in those who came before me and were my mentors, and in those who see me as a mentor figure. FIRST cultivates new types of interest in and understanding of STEM fields and inspires people to pursue these fields. In addition to the technical skills and hands-on experience FIRST gives to its participants, it also develops self-confidence, leadership, teamwork, and technical skills in those students. This applies both to people who had some prior interest in STEM, and many other who may have joined for non-technical aspects of the team, or just because their friends were doing it. So yes, I think FIRST is effective in reaching new groups and inspiring people to pursue the STEM fields.

[Alex.q]

I definitely agree with what has already been said. Additionally, imagine what your team would be like if everyone only wanted to work on the robot and nobody wanted to do the business related stuff. The team wouldn't have any sponsors, no media or marketing, no website...

You mentioned atcompetitions feeling bad that people were in the stands and only a handful of people were in the pits. What fun would the game be if nobody watched and cheered, and isn't scouting integral to success for top-tier teams? Additionally, from experience, it is unproductive and impratical for the entire team to stand around in your pit, there is just not enough space.

I'm not trying to berate you, just trying to point out it is important to have people who aren't totally focused on the robot. With that said, I would still branch out to FTC or find another way to make sure anyone who is interested in building/design/programming has a chance to do it. It would not be a good idea to force a student into doing business or media activities if they truly want to be designing or programming the robot.

[gblake]

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? ... It breaks my heart to see kids feel "disposable"; hell, I am the lead programmer and I feel that way sometimes.

..., but with the ~100 students who signed up for the team makes me worried. ... 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.

My previous post was a bit vague. This one will get into specifics.

On a 5-person VEX Robotics Competition team, is is almost impossible for 80% of the team members to be anywhere other than driving/coaching, building, maintaining, scouting, and talking during every tournament. In fact, every person on a 5-person VRC team is likely to have at least two important responsibilities the day of the competitions, and leading up to them. That eliminates the both laments in the quote above.

The cost of a decent, first-year VRC team that attends a couple of tournaments (day trips) is around $1500 (less the 2nd year). Divide $1500 by 5 students and you get a great STEM Robotics experience (including as much right-brained and business activity for every team member as the team wants to take on) for $300 per student. The costs are substantially lower in nearly every year afterward.

Put 100 students into 20 VRC teams of 5 students each. Budget $1500 for each team. Total budget is $30,000 for a full, fine, 100-student season of iterative learning, competition, fund raising, business planning, project management, cheering, advertising, public speaking, mentoring, and ....

Add $3,000 to that $30,000, and those 100 students can host a great tournament to complement any others in your region, or can be the founders of a great regional activity. It will be affordable, accessible, sustainable, and valuable, and can steadily engage students 12 months out of 12, or for the entire school year (other programs, like FRC can be run as a 12-month program also, but with a different rhythm and with some extreme peaks and valleys that are both exhilarating and taxing/exhausting).

So, I don't know what your FRC team's budget is, but I'll bet that by blending a modest FRC program with broad participation in VRC or a similar program, your school will be able to ensure all students put their hands on a VEX robot, a pit display, a strategy, a team calendar, a budget and a set of talking points; and ensure that those students iteratively improve all of those items over the course of a each spread-out, multi-tournament season. Your school will then be able to use the FRC program and robot as the capstone project for a 100-student STEM army! . At that point, any perception that your school's STEM robotics program is a funnel through which only a few students "truly" pass, while the rest miss out; should melt away. Diversity creates strength.

Then, at FRC events, students who do the cheering or do the business model or do whatever, can be lending their best special talents to the FRC team, not making do with leftovers; and will in parallel be intimately involved in everything on their lower-cost (high return) VEX team. Even if some students aren't maintaining or building the FRC robot, I hope FRC tournaments won't the the time when they feel they miss-out on opportunities. Instead, FRC tournaments can become the time when they get to relax a bit and soak up all the fun of being a fan who knows the story behind the story, and can appreciate best efforts of all the teams. Who knows, they might even fan out and help some rookie teams or others who are struggling....

We (STEM Robotics participants) don't have to force fit every person or their contributions into one program. When we ask about "robotics" (see the title of this thread) we are being terribly myopic if we think robotics is a synonym for FRC, or only FIRST programs, or only BEST, or only VRC, or ... STEM robotics is a big topic and there are programs that are well-suited for almost any situation, including giving 100 students opportunities, choices and experiences well-suited to each of their needs and aspirations.

Blake

[penguinfrk]

Originally Posted by John

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.

Unfortunately, the statistics available from WA OSPI were not as thorough back then. The Titan Robotics team (492) was formed in the 2000-2001 school year. Newport (948) and Bellevue (949) started competing in 2002.

The first year that a standardized science test was administered was in the 2002-2003 school year; 492 was in their 3rd competition season by the time the test was administered, and 948/949 were in the 2nd competition season, if I'm not mistaking. At the time, 1899 (Interlake) and 2412 (Sammamish) did not exist.

Team #              | 492*  | 948   | 949   | 1899* | 2412
2003 Science Scores | 62.9% | 70.5% | 60.4% | 52.0% | 47.4%
2010 Science Scores | 92.3% | 80.1% | 74.9% | 69.1% | 51.4%
d(scores)           | 29.4% | 9.6%  | 14.5% | 17.1% | 4.0%
d(scores)/year**    | 2.67% | 1.07% | 1.61% | 2.44% | 0.8%

*The Bellevue School District is an awfully inaccurate school district to examine for two reasons.

First, International School (492) has a student enrollment system different from the other schools. It is done by lottery, and very academia-focused (i.e. no school sports, few extracurriculars, etc.) Moreover, the school spans from 6th to 12th grade, meaning that students get 3 years' more exposure to the clubs in the school than they otherwise would at a traditional 4-year senior high school.

Second, Interlake High School (1899) adopted an accelerated program in the 2006-2007 school year (2nd year of 1899 in FRC) as a continuation of the middle school program. Many gifted students that otherwise would've been at 948, 949, and 2412's schools are attending Interlake. The subsequent inflation of test scores makes statistics for 1899 a clear outlier.


**The change in scores per year of FRC team existence is the absolute change in percentage points, not a measure of the rate of growth/improvement on tests.


However, these statistics are enough to draw a few conclusions.

For one, the correlation between 2003 test scores and the presence of FRC teams is very weak; in fact, 948's school had stronger test scores than 492's school. However, by 2010 there clearly has been a drastic change in performance, and every school saw growth. In other words, FRC magnifies academic performance.
Second, the change in test scores is not a linear function. More veteran teams that have a stronger presence in the school will have a greater impact for a given duration of time (i.e. year to year) than will a newer team.


Further extensions: demographic constituency, team size/percentage of school population, mentor number/mentor:student ratio, economic status (as measured by free/reduced lunch qualification), among others. This is the project devised for my internship at FIRSTWA, and I will be mining more thorough data on teams across the entire state of Washington. Once I have better data to back up more sophisticated conclusions later in the year, I'll be sure to post them or publish a white paper or something.

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by Alex.q

I definitely agree with what has already been said. Additionally, imagine what your team would be like if everyone only wanted to work on the robot and nobody wanted to do the business related stuff. The team wouldn't have any sponsors, no media or marketing, no website...

You mentioned atcompetitions feeling bad that people were in the stands and only a handful of people were in the pits. What fun would the game be if nobody watched and cheered, and isn't scouting integral to success for top-tier teams? Additionally, from experience, it is unproductive and impratical for the entire team to stand around in your pit, there is just not enough space.

I'm not trying to berate you, just trying to point out it is important to have people who aren't totally focused on the robot. With that said, I would still branch out to FTC or find another way to make sure anyone who is interested in building/design/programming has a chance to do it. It would not be a good idea to force a student into doing business or media activities if they truly want to be designing or programming the robot.

You made me remember a very important point... One of the most celebrated individuals on our team last year never touched the robot. She spent 3 years organizing and expanding our scouting program, and that scouting program is a huge reason we've done as well as we have. it's enabled us to find the teams that compliment us, while not necessarily being the "best" teams at the competition.

Scouting takes more than writing numbers down on a piece of paper... it takes an intimate knowledge of the details of all the robots competing, and a broad understanding of all the technologies and approaches each team used. Without an understanding of engineering principles, you can't scout effectively.

Originally Posted by eagle33199

You made me remember a very important point... One of the most celebrated individuals on our team last year never touched the robot. She spent 3 years organizing and expanding our scouting program, and that scouting program is a huge reason we've done as well as we have. it's enabled us to find the teams that compliment us, while not necessarily being the "best" teams at the competition.

Scouting takes more than writing numbers down on a piece of paper... it takes an intimate knowledge of the details of all the robots competing, and a broad understanding of all the technologies and approaches each team used. Without an understanding of engineering principles, you can't scout effectively.

You have just perfectly summed up all of scouting in FIRST. That was amazing!

[Conor Ryan]

Does this raise other questions like:
What to do with 100 students on a team to keep everyone motivated and actively engaged?

[gblake]

Originally Posted by penguinfrk

...

However, these statistics are enough to draw a few conclusions.

...

Larry,

Be careful. From what you have shown us so far, you can not draw the conclusions you listed in your post. Correlation does not mean causation.

Until you compare datasets in which the ONLY difference is the presence of a STEM robotics program, and until you can see variation in test scores that matches variations in the STEM robotics program; you simply can not tell if the robotics programs are symptoms, causes, or coincidences.

What you see in your data could be the result of many influences.

I hope you can devise a method for showing causation and not just correlation; but I don't think you have that method in place yet.

Blake

[gblake]

Originally Posted by Conor Ryan

Does this raise other questions like:
What to do with 100 students on a team to keep everyone motivated and actively engaged?

A more fundamental question would be "Why attempt to put 100 students into a single team?"