Sippin' on the haterade

[Patrick Chiang]

Originally Posted by huberje

I just have two questions on this:

1) What top teams did you talk to to determine that a lot of top teams work by keeping their mentors hands-off?

2) Could you elaborate on how a team can utilize mentors well?

1. Well, a lot of top teams in my area are mentors-hands-off at competitions. You can go to the pits, and see that most people there are students. Of course, there are some teams where it's mentors-fix-everything at the pits, which I think is depriving the students the experience of actually doing things themselves under the pressure of competition.

2. This depends on the kids. In our team, mentors are resources. We teach our students how to use the tools (or how to program, in my case, though I'm passing that responsibility of teaching to the students next year) before the season. Then, when they brainstorm at the beginning of the season, we help them come up with a structure of how they should present and vote on their ideas (which they agree on). And when they build, they ask us questions like "how well do you think this will work" "what's the best way to achieve this" "I'm stuck, can you help me with this" ...etc. There's also cases where we've helped them used some power-tools, but overall, the robot belongs to the kids. In the end, they're extremely proud (and inspired) of this little monster they've created, and I think this is a big part about FIRST. A big part that you can't really get when the mentors are building the robot.

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

Patrick,
Many teams do that because it is one way to limit the number of students that can be included for teams with limited resources.

Yes. I realized that a while after I posted that. Read my last post on why that's not the same thing. Students can choose how much time they put into robotics. On the other hand, they can't choose which team to join.

[Madison]

Originally Posted by Patrick Chiang

On the other hand, they can't choose which team to join.

You should talk to the students we have on our team that have teams at their own schools, but are a member of our team instead.

This year, there are at least three that spring to mind. Last year, there were an additional two. There are several kids that are members of our team that attend private schools that don't have teams, but the public schools they would have otherwise attended do. They're members of our team because they value the experience we can provide due to, in no small part, our experience, strong relationship with our sponsors, and tremendous mentor involvement and support.

[EricH]

Engineering is, at least partially, about producing an optimum product, based on resources available.

This leads to a number of design choices and tradeoffs. Maybe an "inferior" material is used because it's cheaper/more readily available than the preferred material. Maybe time is extended to reduce cost slightly. Maybe you can produce a part at 0.0001" every time... but you produce it at 0.001" every time because that's "good enough" and besides the machine that normally does the 0.0001" is busy on some other project. Maybe you throw 5 engineers at a problem, or maybe you throw 2 interns at the same problem. Maybe you use a thickness that isn't going to work because that's available--but you can design another part to take up the extra stress.

I don't really care whether you've got 60+ students, 30+ engineering mentors, 30+ NEMs, a full CNC shop, and a $300,000 budget, or you have 5 students, one teacher who keeps the shop open, hand tools, and a shoestring budget. It's all about how you use those resources to produce the best design you can. If you want to use those engineering mentors to produce your entire robot, that's your choice. If you want to have those engineering mentors sit around drinking coffee, that's your choice, but they may have some good input anyway. If those 5 students with minimal mentor support beat you, it ain't luck. It's them using their limited resources to the optimal level.