FRC as a credit bearing course

[Al Skierkiewicz]

I sent a request to the lead teacher just now. Our students have to sign in for attendance at the regular Monday team meeting. Minimum attendance is the three hours, from 5:30-8:30 every Monday. You must complete the Question of the Week online and participate in class activities while present just to get a passing grade. Your participation above that improves your grade and helps with determining who travels, who is on the pit crew and if you can be on the drive team. We continue to do fundraising and Chairman's activities and so you are expected to participate in those as well. The minimum fundraising requirement pays for your team shirt. Additional fundraising helps defer your travel expenses. Chairman's activities will include demos, community service, and other events as they come up.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

OK,
This is what I received from our teacher as an outline for mandatory Monday meetings.

The subteam reference is to be a 1:45 meeting as sub team with those mentors to train and discuss items needed for the build season. i.e. electrical will teach stripping technique and soldering of various electrical terminals and wires.
Team building will include VEX/FTC robot building as well as student to student peer interaction. Community outreach is planning and preparing for any outreach events that might occur including holiday food drives, senior lawn cleanup, demos, FLL etc. We are also planning other team building events and leadership training that are still being worked out. This is in flux right now as we are trying to respond to comments and expectations expressed by our students during post mortem meetings two weeks ago.

Here is a basic outline of the semester:
Week 1 Orientation (Aug 25)
Week 2 Cookout
Week 3 Subteam presentations/VEX kit sorting
Week 4 In subteams/VEX orientation
Week 5 In subteams/team building/community outreach
Week 6 In subteams/team building/community outreach
Week 7 In subteams/team building/community outreach
Week 8 In subteams/team building/community outreach
Week 9 In subteams/team building/community outreach
Week 10 In subteams/team building/community outreach
Week 11 In subteams/team building/community outreach
Week 12 In subteams/VEX practice
Week 13 In subteams/VEX class competition
Week 14 Final subteams/team building/leadup to kickoff
Week 15 Final subteams/team building/leadup to kickoff
Week 16 Final subteams/team building/leadup to kickoff

[SteveGarward]

If anyone is interested in what we teach in the class for electrical during our fall classes, send me a PM for details.

[treffk]

http://www3.usfirst.org/aboutus/impact

On that page your teacher can request the study on how FIRST programs meet education standards. No 2 credit programs are alike, each has to be tweaked and adjusted for that specific area and school.

[Coach Norm]

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

OK,
This is what I received from our teacher as an outline for mandatory Monday meetings.

The subteam reference is to be a 1:45 meeting as sub team with those mentors to train and discuss items needed for the build season. i.e. electrical will teach stripping technique and soldering of various electrical terminals and wires.
Team building will include VEX/FTC robot building as well as student to student peer interaction. Community outreach is planning and preparing for any outreach events that might occur including holiday food drives, senior lawn cleanup, demos, FLL etc. We are also planning other team building events and leadership training that are still being worked out. This is in flux right now as we are trying to respond to comments and expectations expressed by our students during post mortem meetings two weeks ago.

Here is a basic outline of the semester:
Week 1 Orientation (Aug 25)
Week 2 Cookout
Week 3 Subteam presentations/VEX kit sorting
Week 4 In subteams/VEX orientation
Week 5 In subteams/team building/community outreach
Week 6 In subteams/team building/community outreach
Week 7 In subteams/team building/community outreach
Week 8 In subteams/team building/community outreach
Week 9 In subteams/team building/community outreach
Week 10 In subteams/team building/community outreach
Week 11 In subteams/team building/community outreach
Week 12 In subteams/VEX practice
Week 13 In subteams/VEX class competition
Week 14 Final subteams/team building/leadup to kickoff
Week 15 Final subteams/team building/leadup to kickoff
Week 16 Final subteams/team building/leadup to kickoff

Al,
Thanks for posting this.

Do the students chose the subteam of their choice?
Do the students get credit for the Spring Semester as well in Robotics? If so, can you elaborate some on that semester as well.

Thanks,

Norman

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Norm,
The students will give us their first, second and third choices for sub teams. We will listen to students who find that the sub team they are assigned is really not working for them. The build season carries the same Monday required meeting time which can be split between school and build space. Students not actively working on the robot will build field parts, work on strategy, yearbook, video documentation (for year end DVD) assembling buttons work on Chairman's activities, Woodie Flowers submission and other award submissions as needed. The same grade requirements continue throughout the year.

[hionwind]

As the head mentor of 1678, I have always wanted to teach a course that was firmly entrenched in the FIRST program. Since our program works so well already, my goal was to not mess with what already works but build it into the curriculum.

This year, I proposed a "Robotics Engineering" curriculum to our school board and it was approved for next year. The curriculum is designed to allow students to explore the various aspects of the FIRST program and then, later, specialize in their preferred area. I envision it becoming a four year program with each year building on the previous one. A brief outline of the four year program is as follows:

Year 1 - Students take a variety of mini courses in the areas of CAD design, fabrication, mechanics, electronics, programming, business development, and media.

Year 2 - Students choose an area of specialization and work on a sub-team to develop their skills to a higher level. Peer or mentor-led workshops will be a major part of the second year curriculum.

Year 3 - Students become sub-team leaders and work on developing leadership and communication skills while continuing to develop their technical skills. Students would also run workshops and mentor first and second year students.

Year 4 - Students take on more responsibility including leadership of one or more outreach programs. I envision some kind of capstone project that would enable seniors to give back to their community in a meaningful way.

At this point, I have not developed the details of the curriculum for each of the four years but I think this gives an idea of where we are heading. Again, the main goal is to use what is already working in the FIRST program. As you can see, I really favor the "apprenticeship" model of learning which is really what FIRST is all about.

Our school district is very supportive of this curriculum and is providing us with facilities, equipment (computers, shop equipment, etc.) and even stipends for some of the mentors.

In this upcoming first year, the course will be taught as an after school program. Assessment will be done in much the way employees are evaluated at work. I will conduct periodic performance reviews and give feedback to each student on how they are progressing. The class will be graded on a pass-no pass basis.

I would be happy to give more details and would also love to hear any thoughts or suggestions.

[S.P.A.M.er]

I know that in Volusia County Florida, they currently offer an academy at one school (Spruce Creek HS Academy for Information, Technology and Robotics [AITR]) that is specifically designed to be like FIRST and that they work in 6 week hexmesters. The lead mentor/teacher for team 2152 is writing the curriculum along with the Ford PAS Career Academy team with Ford NGL. This is why the team name will be changing slightly in the next year to add in "Driven by Ford". The students stay within the academy all day and only if they take an AP class offered during first block are they able to go outside the academy.

I cannot give specifics at this time on the curriculum because it is still being ironed out, as I'm fairly certain that this was the first year the academy was in this form. But during the 6 weeks of build season, that hexmester was specifically designed to be build season.

[jijiglobe]

Getting credits for FRC would be nice but having it as a class would mean that you a) cant quit and b) cant join if you don't get in. FRC is a lot of work and it feels a little wrong to make someone who got into the class but then didn't like it(somehow) stay on their team. Per that same token only a certain amount of students can get into every class so inevitably some amount of students will probably be rejected. I know some teams have a similar idea of how a team should be structured to that provided by a class but I don't suppose every team is structured this way. Our team gets about 200 students who are interested every year and then the ones who wanted to do battle bots or the ones who aren't willing to put in the work slowly quit the team until week 2 of build season where we have 5-10 dedicated newbies.

In other words:
-Getting credit for FRC sounds great
-making it a class... not so much

What do you guys think?
Especially those teams that have done this.

And of course: my personal views and this post do not in any way represent the views of my team.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

jiji,
Yes that is true. We have 60 students as a soft maximum. Some who missed out for some reason do find a way to get in and some will find that FRC is not for them and would rather drop than suffer the bad GPA when they don't want to work through it. In a perfect world where we had a few more mentors and more money we would definitely move to two teams. That is always a possibility if we find a sponsor who has some extra people who want to participate and a fund they have no plans for.

[asid61]

Originally Posted by hionwind

As the head mentor of 1678, I have always wanted to teach a course that was firmly entrenched in the FIRST program. Since our program works so well already, my goal was to not mess with what already works but build it into the curriculum.

This year, I proposed a "Robotics Engineering" curriculum to our school board and it was approved for next year. The curriculum is designed to allow students to explore the various aspects of the FIRST program and then, later, specialize in their preferred area. I envision it becoming a four year program with each year building on the previous one. A brief outline of the four year program is as follows:

Year 1 - Students take a variety of mini courses in the areas of CAD design, fabrication, mechanics, electronics, programming, business development, and media.

Year 2 - Students choose an area of specialization and work on a sub-team to develop their skills to a higher level. Peer or mentor-led workshops will be a major part of the second year curriculum.

Year 3 - Students become sub-team leaders and work on developing leadership and communication skills while continuing to develop their technical skills. Students would also run workshops and mentor first and second year students.

Year 4 - Students take on more responsibility including leadership of one or more outreach programs. I envision some kind of capstone project that would enable seniors to give back to their community in a meaningful way.

At this point, I have not developed the details of the curriculum for each of the four years but I think this gives an idea of where we are heading. Again, the main goal is to use what is already working in the FIRST program. As you can see, I really favor the "apprenticeship" model of learning which is really what FIRST is all about.

Our school district is very supportive of this curriculum and is providing us with facilities, equipment (computers, shop equipment, etc.) and even stipends for some of the mentors.

In this upcoming first year, the course will be taught as an after school program. Assessment will be done in much the way employees are evaluated at work. I will conduct periodic performance reviews and give feedback to each student on how they are progressing. The class will be graded on a pass-no pass basis.

I would be happy to give more details and would also love to hear any thoughts or suggestions.

Do you accept students from other schools? Haha.
This sounds amazing though.

[hionwind]

Originally Posted by asid61

Do you accept students from other schools? Haha.
This sounds amazing though.

Actually, we accept students from any of the Junior High Schools or High Schools in the Davis Joint Unified School District. That includes 3 junior highs and 4 high schools.

[Seth Mallory]

To be on 192 you have to be in one of the 2 sections of our Engineering Technology course. In this course they learn how to work with materials and work on engineering projects. The second year also includes learning to teach, leadership, and project management. The students in the class are also on the after school club that is 192. The students love our program because the second and third year students are the ones running the program. FRC came to the school after this class was started and we use to allow the students demonstrate what the have learned and what they can achieve. For the adults it is not how well the robot performs as how the students perform. Al has seen 192 at competition and he can tell you that 192 mentors have to go find other things to do or we will be board. The class has credit but not the robot team. This system works for us and what works best for you is how you should be doing things. There is no one best way.