How to deal with lack of participation

[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.

[The other Gabe]

Originally Posted by xXhunter47Xx

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?

We have Pre-season trainings for specific skills, like milling or lathing in fabrication, as well as electronics, programming, etc. I know that we recorded these at least one time, but IDK where they are (there's definitely some Mastercam tutorials here: https://www.youtube.com/user/tahomarobotics)... The team also trains people during build season, with the more experienced students training the less experienced ones. If people aren't doing anything, the lead mentor or team president will often direct them over to the mills or something so that they can learn how to do a thing- just standing around socializing is generally frowned upon. For the women on our team, we have the Girl's generation (a preseason event) competition that we host, in which they get a kind of crash course on how to do pit work, drive, etc. (unfortunately in recent years we have been a very male heavy team; this past year another team actually helped us out, since they could not themselves participate). In the end though, the students have to want to learn these things in order to learn them, as is the case in all things. Hope I could help, even by just a little bit

[lkg9999]

We had similar issues our first two years. We would start with a large group of students, and by the middle of build season only a handful would be left. We implemented a few changes last summer that have had a large impact on the rate of participation:
- We implemented a team Code of Conduct with a written contract that both the student and their parent signs. In the Code of Conduct are the rules on participation at meetings and events. We found that unless we did this no one would show up to fundraising events or help with scouting.
- We implemented a system of student-led team leads. During the fall, we met weekly and each workstream had at least one project they were working on. Programmers got to work with previous robots, drive train tried out new mechanum wheels, etc. This helped keep the new kids engaged.

I'm curious as to how other teams keep track of attendance? Do you have a formal sign-in system at each meeting?

[GreyingJay]

As a brand new mentor I appreciate the feedback in this thread. Thanks all.

I have really enjoying being part of my first build season and first regional competition (second one coming up in a few weeks).

I can resonate with some of the frustrations other teams are feeling, but from a slightly different perspective. Our team has many enthusiastic, young (grade 9) students who want to help but find it frustrating that their abilities to contribute are limited. They can't all have contradicting ideas make it into the final design. They aren't all skilled enough to write code that will benefit the final robot. They don't all have the skills needed to do much in the fabrication and assembly of the robot. (This goes for me too. I barely know how to tap a thread, let alone teach a student to do it.)

I really like some of the ideas in this thread.. ongoing tool training sessions during robotics meeting times, programming on previous years' robots (complicated this year by the switch from cRio to RoboRio, but next year we will have this year's robot as a good starting point). The enthusiasm is there, the skills and learning will come. I am excited to continue working with these students over the coming years... I hope they will stick it out.

My introduction to FIRST and FRC has been a blast. I love, LOVE the fact that students are interested in engineering and programming. I want to do everything I can to make sure they get a positive experience out of being on an FRC team, and not feel like they are useless or not able to contribute as much as "the bigger kids".

[hionwind]

All teams are faced with the issue of retaining current team members and recruiting new ones. Since you are going to lose your seniors every year, recruitment has to be a part of your program. Here are some of things that our team has found to help with retention and recruitment:

1. Provide structure and organization within your team. Nothing hurts a team more than being disorganized. Define your sub-teams and what each of their roles are. Plan your meetings and communicate clearly when those meetings will take place and what objectives are to be met.

2. Plan an "Open House" either at the end of competition season or during the fall (or both). Make sure that this is well-organized and provides opportunities for the attendees to get involved with some hands-on projects. We usually have workshops set up for electronics, programming, mechanical, or business-media and have the attendees rotate through each workshop. Have a sign-up sheet and be pro-active about contacting the attendees after the event to keep them informed about your team and it's activities.

3. Invite all your current team members and potential recruits to an off-season competition. There is no better way to get people interested in FIRST.

4. Develop your mentor base. Find quality mentors that want to work with kids. This is not easy but is a key component of every successful team.

5. Have FUN! I cannot overemphasize how important this is. We all do this to have fun. If it's not fun, you are not going to retain or attract students. One of the things our team has done to keep it fun is to host a WADPAN. This stands for "work all day, play all night". We plan an intense workday, arrange a team dinner, and then break out the fun and games for an evening of team bonding.

Hope that this helps.

[GreyingJay]

Love the idea of the team socials and opportunities for bonding. That would be a way to get everyone involved in something that isn't determined by their skill level or seniority in the team.

One of my favourite parts of working during build season was the dinners we shared together each night before getting to work. Students (well, their parents!) took turns preparing food so it wasn't all pizza, pizza, pizza. Then, at the regional, having dinners together after each long and exhausting day.

Nothing like sharing a meal to foster a sense of community!

[protoserge]

Have you asked your students why they aren't participating? Obviously you have to make sure they are comfortable answering this question, but it may help you overcome your issues.

Chief Delphi is a great resource, but it doesn't always have the solution. There is a lot of great advice here, but if you don't know why the students aren't engaged, you can't solve the root cause.

I'm not sure if I missed it, but how many mentors do you have and how engaged are they in the entire season?

[xXhunter47Xx]

Originally Posted by stinglikeabee

Have you asked your students why they aren't participating? Obviously you have to make sure they are comfortable answering this question, but it may help you overcome your issues.

Chief Delphi is a great resource, but it doesn't always have the solution. There is a lot of great advice here, but if you don't know why the students aren't engaged, you can't solve the root cause.

I'm not sure if I missed it, but how many mentors do you have and how engaged are they in the entire season?

We have 2 Engineers as mentors, and 2 parents who are mentors.
One engineer is engaged all the time, the other comes once in a while. Both parents are full time.

We'd ask, if they'd show up to even the catch up meetings. It's gotten that bad. The general consensus seems to be that since build season is over nobody really cares anymore.

[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.