FRC as a credit bearing course

[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.