The build schedule: how do you guys do it?

[Mark Sheridan]

Does anyone else have school finals during week 1? We lose most of week 1 because the students have finals Monday to Thursday. So we just show them the game Saturday and let them chew on it a bit before they get back to their studies.

Luckily, they get the friday off so we use that to simulate the game and come up with our design goals.

Losing the essentially the first 6 days (maybe count it as 5.5) is a big blow. Right now we are working hard on coming up with a drivetrain that we can use again and again (like 254 and 25). We really need something like that so the mentors can make sure we have the right parts in stock and ordering ones we need once we know what the game is. Be able to make small adjustment to a proven design can really help us jump ahead in the build season or rather catch up to every other team.

In regards to homework, we sort of did it unofficially this year, but next year we are going to copy team 27 and have homework sessions during the weekday meetings from 3:00 to 5:00 (maybe to 6:00 if a student as a lot or sports). We typically meet tuesday Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The Tuesday and Thursday meetings are typically the least effective because of homework. I want these to be more effective by forcing students to finish their studies before working on the robots. It could also allow us to add wednesday and monday meetings without hurting the students' grades.