Mentors on the team

[372 lives on]

Originally Posted by Billfred

With that out of the way, let me ask some questions:

1) If a team can't press a pinion gear onto a motor properly, but a mentor can take it to work and get the operation done quickly and effectively, should the mentor "sit on the sidelines"?
2) If a team has four hacksaws, 40 feet of pipe that needs cutting, and three available students, should that fourth hacksaw just sit on the shelf?
3) If a mentor's demonstration can save the team valuable time and resources, should a student tear it down and start it fresh?

I submit the answer is no to all of these. Balance is the answer.

YESSS...



it looks to me most people who post in this thread are on teams with plenty of mentor help. So i will post a perspective of the opposite.
my team has a few vary capable mentors who have been doing first since pre-2000 since I have been here we only have mentors helping us for one or two days a weeks leaving us alone, except the school adviser, for the other four days. the mentors will normally help teach how to use tools and basic stuff; they will not touch the robot unless we need a custom part that we cant make ourselves(our school only has a small wood/welding shop with limited equipment). I find this method does work well for people on the team to INSPIRE stem but unless you are super committed it is difficult for people to find there place on the team (we have averaged less than 15 members for the last 5 years.). Our robot designs are usually rather effective and able to compete with the "'"best"'" teams. members of our team have learned far more than members of the local mentor heavy teams(yes I know this for a fact).
so from what i have seen more mentor help will inspire more people, but less mentor help will inspire people more.



P.S.

Originally Posted by squirrel

I disagree, because I've never seen it happen.
t
My guess is that you've never seen it happen either.

I have seen teams where mentors do all the work there isn't as many as some people think but there definitely are some out there.

[wireties]

Originally Posted by 372 lives on

Our robot designs are usually rather effective and able to compete with the "best" teams. members of our team have learned far more than members of the local mentor heavy teams(yes I know this for a fact)...

I have seen teams where mentors do all the work there isn't as many as some people think but there definitely are some out there.

No offense, but exactly where (and over what time period) did you acquire this extraordinary information? Did you perform some sort of test (from a valid sample set)? If CD sees multiple students (from multiple years) make this statement (mentors design/build everything) about their team, I'm listening. Otherwise such observations are hearsay and/or anomalous.

[nitneylion452]

Originally Posted by 372 lives on

YESSS...



it looks to me most people who post in this thread are on teams with plenty of mentor help. So i will post a perspective of the opposite.
my team has a few vary capable mentors who have been doing first since pre-2000 since I have been here we only have mentors helping us for one or two days a weeks leaving us alone, except the school adviser, for the other four days. the mentors will normally help teach how to use tools and basic stuff; they will not touch the robot unless we need a custom part that we cant make ourselves(our school only has a small wood/welding shop with limited equipment). I find this method does work well for people on the team to INSPIRE stem but unless you are super committed it is difficult for people to find there place on the team (we have averaged less than 15 members for the last 5 years.). Our robot designs are usually rather effective and able to compete with the "'"best"'" teams. members of our team have learned far more than members of the local mentor heavy teams(yes I know this for a fact).
so from what i have seen more mentor help will inspire more people, but less mentor help will inspire people more.



P.S.


I have seen teams where mentors do all the work there isn't as many as some people think but there definitely are some out there.

My team is in it's 3rd season. Year 1, we had 1 capable mentor. Year 2, we had 2. This year, we still have 2 (I'm not including myself as a capable mentor as I only graduated last year. I help with smaller tasks that involve hand tools and such.) I have the same opinion as the majority of the people who have posted on this thread.

EDIT: We also have some parents and teachers who help, but I was limiting the scope to engineering mentors with careers in the field.

[wireties]

Originally Posted by 372 lives on

it looks to me most people who post in this thread are on teams with plenty of mentor help.

The mentor:student teacher ratio on our team is 1:10, last year it was 1:40+ (me being the one). With all due respect, I strongly disagree with your assertions - I've lived it.

[Joe G.]

I will speak as another former student. Let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time, I was an excited high school freshman. I'd been through five years of FLL, two years of VEX, and four years of working independently on a battlebot. I'd built some good robots for those events, and thought I knew it all. I had been counting down the days until I was old enough to join an FRC team.

The team at my high school was essentially starting fresh that year, with a new teacher, and almost entirely new students. The teacher was a laid back type. He said that the team would be mostly student run. I encouraged this, and helped to ingrain an attitude in the team that would come to haunt me years later. I did this because I was stupid, because I thought I knew all the engineering required to build one of these robots.

Build season that year destroyed me. It became apparent that I was in way over my head, along with every other student on the team. We put in many sleepless nights of work, but it wasn't enough to overcome our lack of knowledge. We had a dismal robot that year, and a lot of inter-team conflict over that dismal robot. I got excited about the chance to try again next year, and learn from my mistakes. But that's just my optimistic personality.

Next year, only 4 members of a 15 person team returned.

The next three years were filled with similar cycles. Sporadic successes were mixed in there, but for the most part, FRC went from a dream come true, to a stress-inducing chore. The team's situation did not improve, because of the "students only" attitude that I pushed so hard for my freshman year, that was too late to turn around. The majority of students left when the experience turned frustrating, and even those like me were immediately shunned upon graduation. Knowledge was gained and lost and gained again, each year. I learned much more from spending my spare time on Chief Delphi, than I did stumbling through four build seasons.

I can think of only a couple students whose life was turned towards engineering by that system.

I can think of many more talented individuals who were pushed away from engineering, because being thrown into FRC like a fish in the north atlantic made them think they were no good at engineering. I probably would have gone the same way if I hadn't had inspiring experiences pre-high school in other programs.

If a team makes students feel bad about their abilities, and discourages them from going into engineering, they are doing it wrong, no matter how much direct experience the students get.

I look back on high school and think. What if I'd worked with someone with more experience building that roller claw, instead of wasting a month, lots of PVC, and all our tubes on it? What if someone had told us our 2008 drive system was fundamentally flawed before we showed up at the regional unable to move? What if we'd worked with those great teams who would help us at the regional, rather than being told by our team's culture to shun them, because they did FIRST wrong?

And most hauntingly, I think things like this.
-What if Aaron had someone to help with that cool drive system he thought of, rather than getting frustrated and quitting?
-What if Mike was able to see all the long hours he put in on the bandsaw turn into a beautiful robot, instead of a pile of parts held together by zipties?
-What if Katie had been taught programming, instead of stumbling through it blindly?
-What if someone machined all the parts we couldn't, that Miranda CADded before she left? What if the next year, when we got some machining capabilities, there was someone who knew CAD?

Trust me when I say this. It's clear how an all mentor team is not inspiring. It's not so clear how an all student team can be even more dangerous. This post is intended to shed light on the dangers of extremes. A rigidly student run team is something many people seem to strive for.

I've lived it. I don't want you to.

Absolutes in life rarely make sense. They don't make sense with FRC teams either.

What is the maximum amount of mentor involvement allowed in a robot build, by percentage?

If design is a process of continuous improvement, the time to complete a robot is infinate. Therefore, work to be done is infinate. And therefore, students AND mentors should put in all the effort they possibly can. If either steps back or pushes the other away, the team will suffer.

[DavidGitz]

Here are my thoughts. I've been involved with FRC for for 11 years, 4 as a student and 7 as a coach/mentor. Our current "robot" team (comprised of mechanical, electrical and software teams) has about 70 students on it. We have 2 main team mentors: myself, an EE and our main team mentor, a Physics teacher. We have a couple other parents/teachers and NEMO's who are also involved but with a lesser level of technical proficiency, but they are all very dedicated and intelligent individuals.

Our entire team is student-run, as in we have students that run each of the sub-teams and are responsible for their respective responsibilities, robot-related or otherwise. We try to give every student a good amount of responsibility and level of ownership.

We also try to stay as flexible as possible. For some students we may say make this part, exactly according to this specification and do it as fast as possible. For other students we may say that we need to accomplish this task and that's it. I personally don't feel that this is an all-or-nothing debate for a team, but instead need to focus on the individual. If I have a student who gets inspired by me showing them step-by-step how to solve a problem or perform a task I'll do it, even if it includes me performing the work itself. If I have a student who prefers that I take a step back and let them learn from their mistakes with minimal guidance, I'll do that too. Most students fall somewhere in between, which as a mentor is important to recognize where they are so we can have the biggest impact. As many people post here, FIRST is about Inspiring and Recognizing the Science and Technology. As a team with a low ratio of students/mentors but still a very successful team we feel that this strategy as a whole works well, from the public perspective. However, that (to me) is not the key point of this discussion.

The point is, which is essentially what nileshp87 does not understand, is that the inspiration and recognition has no direct relation to the amount of awards that a team receives at a competition, which I assume is what really caused their misinformed post in the first place. If I can meet the goals of FIRST by working with students to make a competition winning robot, fine. If I can also meet the goals of FIRST by other activities that do not entail having a competition winning robot, that is also fine. They are both equal. I've had students on both sides of the fence. Sometimes whey the see a winning machine which truly trumps their best laid plans it inspires them to stretch the bounds of the imagination. For others, when you win it gives them a sense of accomplishment that is unrivaled.

These are just my "ravings" and I would like to inform nilesph87 that you are not alone in your opinion of FIRST teams. I know several people who feel the same way (and some of them are family ). Unfortunately, these people are under the impression that the point of FRC is to produce a robot that wins awards and is made by high school students. Which is completely wrong.

My apologies if this is lengthy, it is fairly late for me. I just personally get frustrated when people have this opinion (not to mention from attacking a FANTASTIC team) but in Dean's words (correct me if I'm wrong) these people "just don't get it".