Logging Student Hours

[LeelandS]

We do something similar on 1126. We have student fill out a time-sheet each week, due on the Saturday at the end of each (Required to get lunch). This sheet includes the days the student attended and the hours they were there for each day. Students are also required to fill out what they did each day, and to get one of the mentors on their subteam to sign it, as well as rate the student on their performance each week.

The goal of this system is two fold:
One, to keep track of student hours. This system is largely based on the honor system, but if a mentor, while reviewing the form before signing, feels the hours are exaggerated, the student did not really WORK for those hours, or that the student is not being fully honest about their hours/days worked, appropriate measures are taken (generally, reducing the amount of hours that student is credited with for that day).

Two, to make our team as much like a real work environment as possible. Workers (students) are required to keep a (somewhat) detailed log of their work each week, and to get it approved by their supervisor (mentors). If not, the student is met with consequences (not being provided lunch for that Saturday until the time-sheet is completed and handed in).

For preseason and community service hours (which are also required by our team to travel) we use a basic sign in sheet.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask if you have any questions.
-Leeland

[kaliken]

We run a home brewed login system running in excel. It successfully logs all hours from students and mentors. Its as simple as scanning your badge barcode or typing in your badge number when you come and go. Hours are then logged in the excel spreadsheet every day.

Its been in service for almost 3 years now and works with all of our teams. FLL Vex and FRC. In going through its data analysis portion, I was blown away on how many hours we put in the past couple years.

Andrew posted his system a while back as a white paper

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2490?

[rabridges]

Our team have been using this system for the pass few season
and it has worked out very well for us. We rewarded our team members based
upon the work they have put in during the off season and robotics
season. We are continuing to use it this year.

[Cecil]

Team 2010 has just implemented a new way of logging in and out of the meetings. I was browsing around and found the Time Trex management system, and thought we should give it a try. It took some getting used to and setting up, but it is a very nice application and tells us who was there that day and automatically logs hours. Best of all, it's free.

Source Forge Page

Home Page

[thefro526]

Our work days are broken down into two 2.5-3 hour shifts. We have the students sign in for each shift they work and then keep a tally in an Excel Sheet. From there it's pretty easy to sort through who worked the most and the least.

[Dale]

We use a fingerprint reading time clock. There are a bunch on the market, our's happens to be from http://www.bioelectronix.com/

This spits out a nifty Excel spreadsheet for whatever date range you select. For years we used a paper based system but switching to this time clock has given us a far more accurate gauge of who's doing what.

Folks need at least 50 hours in the fall to make the team and fifty hours during build season to go to the competition. Of course many people log much more than that.

[Koko Ed]

We use a sign in sheet every meeting and when they do extra hours students are supposed to sign in when they begin their extra hours and sign out when they leave and have a mentor sign off on those hours.
We use a star chart to keep track of student achievements during the season to determine if students deserve to travel with the team or not. The Star chart measures attendance. community service, oral presentation, fund raising, academic performance during the build season and extra credit (I'm probably missing something).

This is a picture of the star chart in 2010 in the middle of updating by our lead teacher.

[Cecil]

Originally Posted by Dale

We use a fingerprint reading time clock.

Amazing… May have to try this.. I know more students would remember.. Looks too cool to forget to..

[MysterE]

We are using http://www.parktime.com

I like it because it is an online system but allows for IP locking as well. So if needed - say - when we are at a different site for Kickoff, we can log-in and track the hours. You can also connect a camera to it if you wanted to be extra sure that the logins were legitimate - not that we'd need to.

We are doing the average hour tracking this build season. To go to one regional you need to average 10 build hours per week. To go to two regionals you need to average 14 hours per week. To go to the World Championship - if and when we go, you need to average 16 hours per week.

Take a look at the site. Hope it is useful.

[Siri]

How do teams handle off-site time logging without supervision? For instance, our CAD, programming, media, etc teams do a lot of work at home. Are these incorporated into your logs, and if so, how? Thanks!