At what point does it become unacceptable for a mentor to design/build the robot

[Taylor]

This is a struggle - one that many old farts still have.
This is my eighth season in FRC, and it made me cringe when on the first Monday the students were saying, "I like Taylor's idea. Let's go with Taylor's idea."
The thing was, the way we chose to approach this game was decided by the team. The strategies we'll employ were decided by the team. And when I say 'team' I mean students - I only acted as a scribe on the chalkboard. "Taylor's idea" was simply a way to realize that strategy.
Since then, it has been refined and massaged and manipulated, mostly by students, into a workable solution.
I suppose my tl;dr is this: Ideas are ideas. They're not property. Once they're out, they're not owned by anybody. So if you feel your mentors are hijacking your team, make a concerted effort to stick your nose in, work shoulder-to-shoulder, make yourself a part of the process. If they deny you that, demand an explanation.

[Leor Buch]

Originally Posted by austinious

Ask yourself this, should I have let them fail to repair the strut and forfeit several matches? What purpose would that serve?

I think what you did was completely acceptable.
In my opinion alumni and mentors are a resource to be used in furthering the students learning and inspiration. this means to me that students should be free to ask any questions on the plausibility of their ideas. on the other hand I think the students benefit the most from being led to the solution rather than just being told.

in 2009 the students in my team chose an idea the mentor was opposed to. this was also the first year the robot was mostly designed before being constructed.
After a lot of argument our mentor he eventually came over to the student's side and ended up giving them vital assistance.
I guess I'm just agreeing with the majority that balance is what is most important. Just that mentors and alumni have more responsibility for how the team looks in the long term.

[Robogineer1649]

There is not necessarily an universal answer that answers for every team how much of the robot should be mentor built and how much of it should be student built.

That being said i will explain our mentor/student philosophy and i will state that i am a very large advocate for student built robots halfway because this is how our team does it and halfway because I believe if it is a student built robot the students will learn a lot more than just watching the mentors. Additionally the reason i want to become a mechanical engineer and a roboticist is that i was able to build a robot and actually see the entire design process and participate in it starting from stating my strategy all the way to making the bumpers at the end of the season and mounting the electronics.

Team 1649's policy is that mentors are only there to guide and teach the students and answer questions. They are also there to make sure someone doesn't cut there hand off or something else that doesn't grow back. So basically mentors are there to make sure we don't kill each other or ourselves and teach us how to build the robot. This being said the mentors are not in a glass box and all they do is answer questions and then sit back down. Normally the mentors are there and will answer any question you have but they also move around to the different projects we are working on and they will advocate safety or ask questions and suggest ways to do something better. Also the mentors will voice their opinions and tell us when where not doing something right or suggest a way to do it better but the students are still the ones building the actual robot. This is our team philosophy and our main mentor follows this team philosophy very closely with the only exceptions to this being a alumni mentor teaching us how to do CAD while cadding components for this year's robot.

The last thing i want to say is that this is our team philosophy and i just wanted to share it and it may work very well on our team but it may not work for other teams. Such as teams where the machining tools can only be used by mentors or chaperones.

[JohnChristensen]

Originally Posted by Kusha

Sometimes I feel that because mentors have been doing this a long time they don't take into consideration or even test students ideas. The mentality that students can not come up with good solutions, or rather the mentality that the mentors designs are more correct keeps coming into play. Students, if dedicated enough spend as much or more time coming up with solutions, and it isn't all that inspiring to be shot down without any thought or even any testing. I'm saying this from personal experience, sometimes I feel like I have to go on my own to build something to prove it will work and after it does suddenly it is looked at more seriously.

Obviously if students are being inspired then they are going to want to help design and build instead of watching. Watching someone build something leaves something to be desired.

To clarify, I am not attacking any teams in this thread. I am talking about team dynamics.

On our FRC team I can say with confidence that every idea that has ever made it onto one of our robots has been modified, tweaked, corrected, and/or simplified before going into production. This is normal and happens in real life every day. In my day job I work for a local power utility, we install equipment in the field that will likely be in place for the next 30-50 years. That means the engineer who designed the system is not likely to be around when it is removed. Our control systems and mechanical designs must be able to withstand time (decay) and design brain loss (engineer retirement). Since I support systems designed before I was born and the same will be true for someone else in twenty years, it is imperative to refine ideas until they are in the most simple form possible.

I am not sure exactly what is going on with your team but I would encourage you to think about the advice your mentors are offering you. I simplify systems everyday which gives me experience in taking complicated designs and making them work even better. My guess is your mentors can do the same.

Remember build season is six weeks, it will never be possible to test or refine every idea people present. Sometimes the mentors can see that even after refining, your idea will never get to the starting point of another idea. This experience is invaluable. As a mentor myself the thing I value most is student initiative. Go build a prototype and test it, then try and make it simpler right away, finally make a final case for the design. In the end, I believe in evaluating ideas by removing who designed/created it and then comparing each system side by side, the one that integrates into the entire system (complete robot) the best should be used.

We had some great ideas this year for sorting Frisbees, but I could see right away that they would not fit in our robot design due to orientation and frame size. Students got upset when I wanted to move on because of the same mentor/student idea origination. We are now building a different design that everyone is happy with and to be honest, I am really not sure if any one person came up with the current idea. It has been through so many revisions that it must have 20 sets of fingerprints on it by now. I use this as an example to show how systems evolve; your idea might not be used verbatim now but later a small piece of it may find its way into a much bigger and better design.

Just my $0.02.

[Taylor]

Does anybody truly believe there are teams out there where the students "just watch the mentors"?
That just seems like a huge false dichotomy that's been used as the crux of a lot of arguments.

[Anupam Goli]

Originally Posted by Taylor

Does anybody truly believe there are teams out there where the students "just watch the mentors"?
That just seems like a huge false dichotomy that's been used as the crux of a lot of arguments.

I've yet to hear about one, though I hear of many complaining of them. Truth is, if there ever was a team like that, it likely disbanded the year following. You need students to continue to have a team, and most students are probably not as enthusiastic about just watching others.

[LH Machinist]

Back to the original point of this thread, at what point does it become unacceptable? I have read both sides of this issue and I propose an easy solution. During elimination matches...only students may touch the robot and mentors may get no closer than 5 feet away. This rule would virtually eliminate the design/build conflict, since maintainability will rely strictly with the students. If they didn't design/build it...it would almost be impossible for them to repair it.

[Jim Wilks]

Originally Posted by Taylor

Does anybody truly believe there are teams out there where the students "just watch the mentors"?
That just seems like a huge false dichotomy that's been used as the crux of a lot of arguments.

A few years back I visited a team asking for assistance. When the conversation turned to how last years bot was built, the students told me "the mentors built it and dropped it off to us just before our competition"

[Mr. Mike]

Kusha,
This debate has been around ever since the beginning. There will never be a defined line. It is a team decision, not a personal or even a FIRST decision. The team decision will change from year to year. Mentors will come and go as do the students. Skill level and enthusiasm changes with each person.

Remember there is always something to learn in every situation.

[rsegrest]

Originally Posted by austinious

The other groups are a mixed bag, sometimes you need to stop an action in progress, like the first year member using one of my classroom desks to pound a gear onto a shaft... don't ask...

Off topic but...happened in my shop two days ago...just saying

Glad I'm not the only one yelling across the room 'bad idea in action...'

[Anupam Goli]

Originally Posted by LH Machinist

Back to the original point of this thread, at what point does it become unacceptable? I have read both sides of this issue and I propose an easy solution. During elimination matches...only students may touch the robot and mentors may get no closer than 5 feet away. This rule would virtually eliminate the design/build conflict, since maintainability will rely strictly with the students. If they didn't design/build it...it would almost be impossible for them to repair it.

You're going to find yourself by yourself if you're in support of that. What would happen if a student couldn't diagnose what was wrong? What if the repair involves work that students aren't trained to do (Welding, etc.)? It's not black and white, and you can't just place a blanket rule like that. Everyone will suffer from a rule like this. Shunning your mentors means you are getting rid of your most valuable resources.

[BobbyVanNess]

Our team has struggled with some of the issues you all have been talking about. One thing with student involvement, is that the students themselves must have the desire to commit to the team, and all of its operations. I am currently a student, and I've see those around me complain about not having enough student involvement (particularly last year), but there have been cleanup meetings after stop build day when i was one of only a few students to attend.

This year, we've been running the team entirely differently, where students have been doing almost all of the prototyping, with mentor assistance on machining. When we have to make a design decision, we discuss it in an open meeting, where our committed students and mentors voice their opinions, and we come to a collective agreement. So far, this has settle all of our problems, instead of polarizing the team on multiple different ideas, and getting hung up on the decision making.

Last year, I think everyone, including our own mentors, realized that we needed to become a more student oriented team. That being said, the students need to take it upon themselves to come in and build their prototypes, get their ideas heard, build a strong knowledge base of FIRST, and understand what is feasible during a 6 week build season.

[Leor Buch]

Originally Posted by Taylor

Does anybody truly believe there are teams out there where the students "just watch the mentors"?
That just seems like a huge false dichotomy that's been used as the crux of a lot of arguments.

A friend of mine from a team near ours told me that they receive the bot whole without so much as a strategy meeting. while he may be exaggerating most of his teammates (95%) could not answer simple design questions about their bot.

[bduddy]

Originally Posted by Wing

What would happen if a student couldn't diagnose what was wrong? What if the repair involves work that students aren't trained to do (Welding, etc.)? It's not black and white, and you can't just place a blanket rule like that. Everyone will suffer from a rule like this. Shunning your mentors means you are getting rid of your most valuable resources.

That should be on you and them. What if they're not very good at driving the robot, does that mean you should do it? And if you have to do welding or other similar work during elimination matches, then you probably have bigger problems... Not saying I'm in favor of the suggestion, but I don't think these are particularly compelling counterpoints.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by bduddy

That should be on you and them. What if they're not very good at driving the robot, does that mean you should do it? And if you have to do welding or other similar work during elimination matches, then you probably have bigger problems... Not saying I'm in favor of the suggestion, but I don't think these are particularly compelling counterpoints.

This might not be one either, as it depends on the student/mentors in question, but a mentor not being allowed to work on the robot could be the difference between an orderly but hurried major repair (of quality better than "It should work for this match") and a panicky, chaotic major repair of poor quality. Just that calming presence and experience troubleshooting that a good mentor can bring (or fake, if need be) could be the difference.


I agree, it depends on the team. For me personally, if a student is politely asking a mentor to let them do the job, and the mentor is entirely refusing for no reason, that is right about the unacceptable point (mentors refusing because the student doesn't know how to do the job yet and failing to teach is also unacceptable to me--I don't call that mentoring). To any student I happen to work with, that happens to read this, if I'm doing a job you can do, feel free to push me out of the way (though asking first is encouraged in case I'm doing something that needs a safe shutdown).