Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies

[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by Cory

The only reason I made that point was because the first line of your post said "I am fairly sure that I would not have gained much of anything from watching a team of professional engineers construct a robot"

Obviously you didn't intend it that way, but the only interpretation of that statement is that the team of engineers is doing 100% of the work and a student would be sitting there watching and twiddling their thumbs. That was the construct you presented, which we both clearly agree is not the issue being debated.

That was a position taken to an extreme as a rhetorical device, not an accusation levied at a specific team. It is often useful to examine limiting cases of certain positions, specifically, the one quoted in the very first post of the thread:

Who cares who truthfully does the work?

There are two extremes here - the students doing all the work, and the mentors doing all the work. Observing differences between them provides useful insight into what happens when you trend in either direction. In this case, it can show why one maybe should care, in some capacity, about who does the work.

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

He probably did intend it that way, it's a pretty clear statement he made.

See above.