Introducing Newbies!

[alextried]

Hey guys! After a brief veteran meeting today, my lead mentor suggested that I organize some activities for pre-season (after I suggested that more kids is not necessarily better; he shot down an application idea). We hold weekly meetings starting Oct. 8, which is our school's club sign-up day.

As my team enters the 2015 season, we're looking to organize ourselves much more. To be honest, we barely did anything pre-season last year and I want to change that! If you wanted to be in a sub-group, you had to get yourself there.

This year, I'm tentatively suggesting we set up a series of "stations" almost, for each sub-group throughout the pre-January weeks. I think it would help people find what they're good at, what they're not, what they enjoy and weed out those not ready for FRC (consider it an application sans paper; I think some people's abilities don't show up on forms, honestly).

Sometimes, you have to be put in a group to realize you enjoy it, and it's good to have a general familiarity with all parts of your team! I was part of the shooter group on my team for two years and had a lot of fun, but when I started scouting I realized I did it much better and truly loved it.

And so, my question remains:

tldr; What does your team do to help newbies find their niche?

[AllenGregoryIV]

We just started something new today. We're calling it Spotlight.

It's goal is introduce everyone on the team to the non robot side of the team.

We setup a small business plan competition. We split our team into 4 groups and have them design a new team, write a motto, mission statement, create a logo, come up with some fundraising proposal or outreach idea, & give a 3 minute presentation about their team and proposal.

Today was the first day to work on it, so the presentations won't be for a couple weeks.

[ttldomination]

I wrote a post a little while ago about all the different ways you can teach rookies. Maybe you can use some of these methods to fit your needs.

Originally Posted by ttldomination

Teaching is a tricky topic, not necessarily because it's hard, but because of how many different ways people can teach multiplied by how many ways people can learn.

In FRC, you'll find many methods of teaching, each of which will show a remarkable measure of success because they've been adopted to fit the team culture. Teaching methods can include classes, training, presentations, hands-on, demos, challenges, mentorship, "off the deep-end", etc.

I've listed some teaching methods below. You can use a combination of methods (for example, some teams may spend a majority of the fall term on training, and then wrap it up with some frc training), or focus on your energy on one. Find the method that will best fit your team culture.

Building Smaller Robots (VEX/FTC/VRC) - Countless teams use the smaller robotics platforms to teach rookie members. It gives rookie members to play in the sandbox before they're let loose on the beach. They can learn about the basics of building a robot without being overwhelmed by complexity (unless they choose it). You can either participate in FTC/VRC competitions or just create your own little fun challenge.

Building Activity - Teams like to challenge their team members to build "something" for lack of a better word. This can be anything from things like trebuchet launchers to carts and are often made out of easy-to-use raw materials (wood, bicycle tires, etc.). The idea here to give new folks the basics of construction and getting folks accustomed to being around tools and machines without being overwhelmed by complexity (once again, unless they choose to).

Classroom - A classroom setting is exactly how it sounds. You show up and someone teaches a "class." However, classes don't have to be a lecture or boring. They can be interactive and fun, but that relies heavily on the teacher. The entire point of FIRST and FRC in general is hands on, so I haven't seen this method used very much.

Presentations - Presentations are usually used to present a high level overview of materials. Most people confuse a class with just flashing a presentation on the screen, but they are two really different things. In my experience, presentations have been used to acquaint new members with some of the materials and topics they will see in the FRC season.

Mentoring - Some teams may opt not to train rookies at all. Instead, a team may continue its usual fall activities (off-season events, prototyping, etc.) and just rely on older members taking rookies under their wings. I will warn that I've never heard of a team doing this exclusively; mentorship is often used in a combination of other methods.

Personally, I've been a part of programs that start rookies off in small (3-4) VEX teams with a junior leader (sophomore). These students spend the better part of the fall semester going through the robotics process. In the end, these VEX teams compete at a local event. In the remaining month of the fall term, we use presentations to acquaint rookies with aspects of the FRC season (buzzword, previous games, etc.).

- Sunny G.

- Sunny G.

[pastelpony]

With the subgroup/station idea, I wanted to teach my group to program Arduino robots to see if they really want to be a programmer. The scary, old LabVIEW introductions and TI BASIC programming really chased off quite a few people. I feel this is more in sync to what a robot programmer actually is.