How to deal with lack of participation

[FRCmediaMan]

This is something I've dealt with through both of the teams ive been on. I was the media student now media mentor also was a dedicated human player. I did what some teams would call useless but there not. I participated in chairman's and made really cool videos which set an image for the team, i made and managed our social accounts and also designed shirts and buttons. All in all I had loads of fun doing all this and for the most part I was barely involved in the making of the robot. What im saying is there's more to a FIRST team than just building or programming on an robotics team. There are students on our team that come everyday to help make buttons or handouts for competitions or help make videos of your team and what its doing to make FIRST loud. Now as a mentor Im now put to the task of getting other students involved with all these things i did cause i know there useful for the team and some kids can have fun with it.

[TikiTech]

This can always be a problem. Much of what was previously mentioned above are great suggestions.

We start the year with roughly 100 students. We run a difficult program and by the time FRC comes around our number are down to roughly half. The veteran students are partnered with incoming students during the year, they are tasked with eventually finding their replacements by the time they graduate. The veteran students feel vested by that time and really help us mentors by identifying potential stars and help the rookies to find a niche for them that the mentors might not see.

We have been a year round program for the last few years. We compete is roughly 20 different STEM competitions throughout the year not just robotics. Probably more, I have lost count. We host two, week long, STEM camps a year that is run by the veteran students for grades 3-8 inspiring the upcoming students and eventual replacements.

This approach allows many different opportunities for rookie students to find what peaks their interest. Who you thought might be an excellent programmer, and showed desire to become one when applying, turns out to be the best fabricator.

You never know what can cause the inspirational shift in a student so we try to have as many different STEM projects as possible. Some years half the team does not do robotics at all and gets involved in things like science fair, TARC (Team America Rocketry Challenge), West Point Bridge Designer, 3d printing, Science Olympiad and many more.

The students are required to fill out an application and go through an interview, just like applying for a job. This helps them feel a sense of commitment and add some real world pressures. Many times we have students for only half the year as sports and other activities call to them. This is perfectly acceptable, and having them feel welcomed to return is important.

We know that rookies can be overwhelmed with the difficulty of FRC. Many new student do not want to put in the massive amount of time it can take from their own personal time during build season. This is normal and can cause some issues. I find, especially to a first year student to the program, that FRC is hard to “get” and intimidating. We have many work sessions prior to FRC to help build up the skills they will need. This also can help identify what roles sparks their interest.

I have found that taking the semi flaky student (as your example, starts strong then leaves just to return when the hard stuff is done) to a FRC regional can cause much more inspiration than you think.

Many times our rookies come along and basically cheer us on and watch the awesomeness that is FIRST. We will have them walk around the pits, and if interested, will help with minor pit or match scouting or even just picture taking. They come back from a regional in awe and many times very inspired to come back next year and really get into it from then on.

The energy at regional competitions along with talking with so many excited and committed students from other teams, that do so many different roles for their teams, can help generate inspiration and future commitments.

Our program is now in its 5th year, I feel we are on the right path, with 3 Engineering Inspiration and a Chairman’s Award under our belt we will continue to bring along the newbies.

Being from the big island of Hawaii our closest regional is several islands away and the cost of taking them along is high. Many of the students here have never left the island and being such a rural place have never seen a city. So the trip ends up being a real big deal to them. If we manage to have just one student change to appreciate STEM and eventually pursue higher education then it is all worth it.

The main thing to really focus on is INSPIRATION.. It is what we are all here to do..

As said so many times, it is not the robot…

Feel free to message me and I am more than happy to go into much more detail of our programs approach.

Good luck this year.
Aloha!

[xXhunter47Xx]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

Actually, our programming did start right away. As soon as we got the KoP with the new RoboRIO and downloaded the new WPIlib and eclipse, the programmers were engaged in setting up their programming environment and learning about the new control system. The controls group built a control board right from day one, not knowing exactly what the robot was going to look like. So what if we have an unused talon on the board, and took off the pneumatic module later? The programmers could practice on some basic motors and sensors to learn the new system by the time they were ready to do so, and it was only a couple more work days before we had the drive platform going.

That wasn't really our issue. Our programmers were really excited for the new control system (as was I, I love new toys ), but the rookie students were disengaged from the idea.

Originally Posted by Riverdance

As far as incentive, our team has very defined rules about attendance and associated team activity -- for example, you are not actually considered a member of the team if your attendance is below 60%, and you will not be able to attend competition as part of the team. Additionally, to be a driver or officer, your attendance must be above 85%. This tends to keep attendance up.

We also try really hard to engage our students from the get-go. We built a practice drive train to keep the mechanical rookies busy before build season, our public relations team did a lot of outreach stuff with other teams and worked on raising funds throughout the offseason, etc. Coming up with little projects for your freshmen to work on prior to build season keeps them from getting bored. I think we even had a few kids design, build, and decorate a new battery box.

Finally, we keep it going with the little things. Movie night here, Super Smash Bros tournament there. Every once in a while we all get together and get a sense of camaraderie going with the new members, so that meetings don't feel like a chore. It's a treat -- you get to go hang out with your friends and build a robot.

First Bold: Yes, we do this too. You need hours logged to be considered a member, but the issue is that some kids don't seem to care about being a member or not.

Second Bold: We have been trying to do that, we plan to get them engaged mostly in CAD and building over the summer. Hopefully they'll be more engaged and 2016 will be the year where they can really excel without us seniors coming back as college freshman to crack the proverbial whip.

Third Bold: We have not considered that, but I can definitely see how it would bring the team together. The senior members are all already friends so I think that's why we show up, because our friends are there. This is definitely something I'll bring up in our next meeting.

Originally Posted by snoman

we saw similar issues with our teams this year. one thing that we do is to be eligible to go to the regional event the top 4 hours getters from each team are guaranteed to go. the rest of the team members need to write a paper explaining why they think they should come along on the trip. the Mentors and the top 4 hours getters from each team use a decision matrix to select the remaining students for a total of 16 students between the 2 teams . nobody is guaranteed to go unless they put in the hours

We did that last year. Unfortunately, we cannot hold that above their head this year because it's a week 6 event, over spring break. Since we're all out for break, we cannot stop them from showing up Thursday/Friday. We can say they are not allowed to represent our team because they weren't logged for many hours, but they just seemed so excited to be part of the team I don't think they'll listen.

Originally Posted by The other Gabe

Our team allows anyone to join, but only "committed members" (usually based on hours/work done, but our attendance thing screwed up this year, so IDK how they are determining that) are given financial aid in finding hotel rooms at the events to which we go that necessitate that.

The team also offers a lot of training, and we have created a culture in which working hard is appreciated, and the students are masters (there were multiple occasions where I saw mentors learning from the students).

In the end, you can only control so much the direction in which your team goes after you leave, unless you come back as a mentor. enjoy it while you can, and do your best to make the future as good as you can as well

Well said, we're trying to train the rookies and sophomore members of the team so that they can better handle it when the senior members graduate but obviously it didn't work out so well. Can you post some methods on how you train?

Originally Posted by FRCmediaMan

This is something I've dealt with through both of the teams ive been on. I was the media student now media mentor also was a dedicated human player. I did what some teams would call useless but there not. I participated in chairman's and made really cool videos which set an image for the team, i made and managed our social accounts and also designed shirts and buttons. All in all I had loads of fun doing all this and for the most part I was barely involved in the making of the robot. What im saying is there's more to a FIRST team than just building or programming on an robotics team. There are students on our team that come everyday to help make buttons or handouts for competitions or help make videos of your team and what its doing to make FIRST loud. Now as a mentor Im now put to the task of getting other students involved with all these things i did cause i know there useful for the team and some kids can have fun with it.

I can definitely agree with you there, different strokes for different folks. However our issue was that those who claimed they would be committed to build/programming ended up flaking, just as it happened with media/marketing. I really want to point it to disinterest but it's not because when they do show up they seem inspired by the work that those who have regularly shown up have done. Maybe it is an interest problem?

Originally Posted by TikiTech

This can always be a problem. Much of what was previously mentioned above are great suggestions.

We start the year with roughly 100 students. We run a difficult program and by the time FRC comes around our number are down to roughly half. The veteran students are partnered with incoming students during the year, they are tasked with eventually finding their replacements by the time they graduate. The veteran students feel vested by that time and really help us mentors by identifying potential stars and help the rookies to find a niche for them that the mentors might not see.

We have been a year round program for the last few years. We compete is roughly 20 different STEM competitions throughout the year not just robotics. Probably more, I have lost count. We host two, week long, STEM camps a year that is run by the veteran students for grades 3-8 inspiring the upcoming students and eventual replacements.

This approach allows many different opportunities for rookie students to find what peaks their interest. Who you thought might be an excellent programmer, and showed desire to become one when applying, turns out to be the best fabricator.

You never know what can cause the inspirational shift in a student so we try to have as many different STEM projects as possible. Some years half the team does not do robotics at all and gets involved in things like science fair, TARC (Team America Rocketry Challenge), West Point Bridge Designer, 3d printing, Science Olympiad and many more.

The students are required to fill out an application and go through an interview, just like applying for a job. This helps them feel a sense of commitment and add some real world pressures. Many times we have students for only half the year as sports and other activities call to them. This is perfectly acceptable, and having them feel welcomed to return is important.

We know that rookies can be overwhelmed with the difficulty of FRC. Many new student do not want to put in the massive amount of time it can take from their own personal time during build season. This is normal and can cause some issues. I find, especially to a first year student to the program, that FRC is hard to “get” and intimidating. We have many work sessions prior to FRC to help build up the skills they will need. This also can help identify what roles sparks their interest.

I have found that taking the semi flaky student (as your example, starts strong then leaves just to return when the hard stuff is done) to a FRC regional can cause much more inspiration than you think.

Many times our rookies come along and basically cheer us on and watch the awesomeness that is FIRST. We will have them walk around the pits, and if interested, will help with minor pit or match scouting or even just picture taking. They come back from a regional in awe and many times very inspired to come back next year and really get into it from then on.

The energy at regional competitions along with talking with so many excited and committed students from other teams, that do so many different roles for their teams, can help generate inspiration and future commitments.

Our program is now in its 5th year, I feel we are on the right path, with 3 Engineering Inspiration and a Chairman’s Award under our belt we will continue to bring along the newbies.

Being from the big island of Hawaii our closest regional is several islands away and the cost of taking them along is high. Many of the students here have never left the island and being such a rural place have never seen a city. So the trip ends up being a real big deal to them. If we manage to have just one student change to appreciate STEM and eventually pursue higher education then it is all worth it.

The main thing to really focus on is INSPIRATION.. It is what we are all here to do..

As said so many times, it is not the robot…

Feel free to message me and I am more than happy to go into much more detail of our programs approach.

Good luck this year.
Aloha!

First Bold: This is interesting. I see your point in that running multiple STEM operated events will help guide students into what they want to do on the team.
Second Bold: We did this for leadership positions and it didn't work out too well, however I think we will be willing to give it a second chance if it means that we will have more active members.
Third Bold: This definitely worked for our sophomore members. When they were rookies, they left early, didn't show up to some meetings, etc but when taken to their first FIRST (heh) regional, they saw the dedication that the team had to the program and come their sophomore season stayed late working on the robot and having fun while they're at it. I definitely believe this will inspire them to work harder, but we were looking for solutions to keep them engaged before taking them to a regional. I like the idea of STEM events though.


Thank you all for your help. I will take these suggestions into consideration and talk with the rest of the Team Admins about it and hopefully we'll have a stronger team next year.

[SousVide]

One thing that has worked well for us is this. Very early in pre-build, we take the Rookies and spend a lot of time doing team-building with them. We get them to get familiar with the tools, working 1:1 with veterans and mentors.

We have 2 barriers to entry into build season - sort of selection process. 1: skills tests. They have to demonstrate they have some rudimentary understanding on safe use of the basic tools. They have to know a little bit of history of the team; and they have to know a bit about FIRST. 2: We take them to off-season events. There, they see how our team works at a competition. They also see how the other teams work. Teams that are better than us in terms of motivation, funding, spirit, etc. ... They see why they are spending all of those hours during build season.

We found out much earlier on that in previous seasons that students that don't know the basic things about our team, about our history, about FIRST... and if they haven't gone to off-season games - they are just lost and not very motivated; every single one of them stopped coming soon after.

[MrTechCenter]

Easiest way to get interest is to take your students to an offseason competition in the fall. Seeing a competition live for the first time is an incredible experience that always has people coming back for more. And assumimg you're already competing in said offseason event, a good thing to try is making a basic rookie bot that you have the new members build in the fall and compete with in the offseason competition. We did this back in fall of 2012 and got one of the biggest rookie classes ever.

[75vs1885]

Robotics is absolutely a commitment, for the leaders and committed members at least. We, 1885, dealt with a very similar issue this year, we had so many people sign up, come sporadically and never do anything. Luckily we still had enough dedicated members so we could still work, although this required us to stay much later at our school to work. It came to the point that we just cut the members from the team who never did anything other than create distractions, and relocated the ones who had potential but who really needed to realize why they're at robotics.
I suggest tell those few kids that they need to prove themselves or they cant come. Robotics is unlike ANY extracurricular activity, so it's not ok to not live up your commitment.

[philso]

FIRST is not just an opportunity for the students to learn and improve themselves, it is an opportunity for the adults too. I am interested to hear the answers to the OP's questions since I have some situations like that too.

Some of our new mentors have been excited about learning how to physically construct stuff. Their jobs are such that they never get to go and see what they have designed. One even took part in the oRyon RI3D.

I have been learning mainly soft skills (i.e. management of schedules and resources). Some of the students I have been working with were posting iterations of their CAD designs from mid-afternoon to 3:30AM, on a school night. On the other hand, our Media Team have not updated our web site for the last 3 weeks and have stopped showing up at meetings even though they were enthusiastic and assured us of their commitment at the last meeting they attended.

[RoboChair]

Speaking from my experience on my team we loose fully ONE HALF of our "members" to build season EVERY year. This year we only lost ONE THIRD!!!!! I would attribute this to our absolutely rabid off season training that we started this fall.

Throw them in to the fires of dedication and chaos early so that they are ready for the real deal.

[xXhunter47Xx]

Originally Posted by RoboChair

Speaking from my experience on my team we loose fully ONE HALF of our "members" to build season EVERY year. This year we only lost ONE THIRD!!!!! I would attribute this to our absolutely rabid off season training that we started this fall.

Throw them in to the fires of dedication and chaos early so that they are ready for the real deal.

Definitely. We weren't really hard on them in the off-season, but I guess we have to be now.
We plan to use old game designs to kind of simulate a new build season, but just to teach programming and CAD.

[RoboChair]

Originally Posted by xXhunter47Xx

Definitely. We weren't really hard on them in the off-season, but I guess we have to be now.
We plan to use old game designs to kind of simulate a new build season, but just to teach programming and CAD.

It's a good start for sure, just find ways to improve the process each year and make your team training and management more and more robust. Every team has their own groove and needs a customized fully planned out solution that works for them.

[GreyingJay]

Try to make sure that the team does not appear TOO product driven.

By that I mean, kids should not feel like "well, the robot is finished, so they don't need me anymore / there's no point in going".

For that matter, a feeling of success on the team should not be tied to "we did well in the competitions".

It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of build season. Then be stressed at how much work is left to do on the robot, and how little time we have to practice. The more technical members of your team will be engrossed in making the robot perform well, and getting it done in a timely manner. This is the point where the more junior members of the team will start to feel left out. It is tempting to go from saying "Here Bobby, why don't you crimp this connector, I'll show you how" to "Pass me the crimpers, and go be useful somewhere else while I finish this".

Kids want to take ownership of the product. They want to know that they have contributed. Sometimes it's clear - they can point to a part and say "I built that", or "I coded that". Sometimes it is less clear. I think it would be helpful if mentors kept this in mind and made decisions in a way that encourages the work to be distributed. Don't give it all to your expert. Design for compartmentalization. And recognize all the kids for their efforts. The kid who spent every night sweeping and reorganizing the screwdrivers deserves as much recognition as the kid who coded the robot state machines.

I suspect if you interview the kids who have stopped coming, they will say things like "Well what's the point? I show up and there's nothing for me to do. Billy and Johnny are the ones who did all the work, and [they won't let me help]/[I don't know how to help]/[I tried to help but they undid whatever I contributed]". (That last one is the most frustrating and heart-breaking.)

I really like the idea of extending the team activities to do fun social things, so that it doesn't feel like it's over once the competitions are done. Give them reasons to keep coming back that are not tied to robot build, performance, or their skill level.

[jvriezen]

Originally Posted by GreyingJay

For that matter, a feeling of success on the team should not be tied to "we did well in the competitions".

In a similar vein, failure on the field should not be tied to failure of the team. One of my best memories in FIRST is on Friday evening team meeting at a regional where our robot basically contributed nothing to our alliances all day and we mentors decided to focus on the positive and ask for kids to talk about what went well. We figured on about 10 minutes of talk on that at most. We got about 45 minutes. Saturday went no better on the field. Our robot scored once, the entire weekend. Our positives were our ability to help other teams, and how the team worked together furiously to try to resolve our mechanical and programming difficulties. Oh, and we won the GP award.

I consider it a successful season.

[Sperkowsky]

this thread has really sparked my interest as its a real problem my club faces.

We like to think we have 20-30 members but in reality we have 3 people who are always there (including myself) and then a lot of students who come once in a while. So we have like 5-6 random people there everyday but most of them dont know that they are doing and we dont have time mid build season to teach them. the other issue is we get students at random times of the year. we could be on week 4 of build season and someone new walks through the door. As much as we would like to say we are mid build season so you really cant be here. We have to let them in due to our lack of members. My mentor has adopted a quote of "How do you join? you show up. How do you get responsibility? you take it". that sound great but it ends up creating loose members and people who dont know what they are doing.

My ideas right now are
1.create a video series where we teach them everything they need to know to do a specific task.
2.have a hands on challenge (test)related to the specific task they are going for that they have to pass before they can be on the team.
3.have defined sub groups with experienced reliable members leading them.
4.market the club better by driving the robot at freshman orientation (Im expecting a huge influx of loose members but if we market it as a sports team with tryouts they will think of it as more of a commitment.


the last issue I need someone to address is what we would do with veteran members who loosely come. I feel as if when a freshman member comes all the time but sees a junior member coming once a week they will think it is acceptable to come once a week.

[Fields]

Our team only met a couple of times last fall being our first year and not knowing what to expect.

How often do some of you meet in the fall?
Obviously, with enough effort you could meet and do stuff every day, but I don't want to burn out the students OR the mentors.

Right now, I'm thinking about once every two-three weeks mostly for figuring stuff out for next year. Then maybe once a week in the fall for training/team building/media/practice/hangouts.

[GreyingJay]

Originally Posted by jvriezen

In a similar vein, failure on the field should not be tied to failure of the team. One of my best memories in FIRST is on Friday evening team meeting at a regional where our robot basically contributed nothing to our alliances all day and we mentors decided to focus on the positive and ask for kids to talk about what went well. We figured on about 10 minutes of talk on that at most. We got about 45 minutes. Saturday went no better on the field. Our robot scored once, the entire weekend. Our positives were our ability to help other teams, and how the team worked together furiously to try to resolve our mechanical and programming difficulties. Oh, and we won the GP award.

Good on you. I really like this. It kind of sounds obvious but it is something I wish I had thought to do at our last regional, which went pretty much exactly like you described yours. I will for sure try to follow your lead next time.

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

So we have like 5-6 random people there everyday but most of them dont know that they are doing and we dont have time mid build season to teach them. the other issue is we get students at random times of the year. we could be on week 4 of build season and someone new walks through the door. As much as we would like to say we are mid build season so you really cant be here. We have to let them in due to our lack of members. My mentor has adopted a quote of "How do you join? you show up. How do you get responsibility? you take it". that sound great but it ends up creating loose members and people who dont know what they are doing.

It can help if you have more mentors. I was the newbie mentor on the software team which already had ample students and mentors. I was able to work almost one-on-one with one of the younger students who was enthusiastic but felt he couldn't contribute because he didn't know things. I often would say "Well, I don't know the answer to that either, let's find out!" and led by example an attitude of learning to solve problems. The attitude I was trying to set was "I don't need to know all the answers, I just need to know how to find them". I also tried to steer him toward successes and accomplishments within his capability so he wouldn't feel like he wasn't contributing. I received a lot of positive comments from the other mentors and even other students.

Maybe the bottom line is this. Some mentors think they are here to build a robot. I think I am here to build the students. That's what will keep them coming back.