What would you do to improve the FIRST experience?

[jweston]

Originally Posted by marshall

Isn't that more of an issue with your own team and being dismissive of other teams' cultures than an issue of how those other teams run?

Originally Posted by qscgy

I may have worded that badly. It's mostly just the new members who do this, but they make up a sizable portion of the team. But no, I don't think that it's just us dismissing other teams' cultures. When a team that has been around for almost 10 years still has mentors doing most of the work on the robot, and not even trying to engage the students, that team's culture needs a change.

These quotes right here are raise a couple of common problems I'd like to see all of us work towards changing. The first problem is it's easy for us to assume a highly polished, well-designed, well-executed robot must be mentor-built. If you are at an event with such a team's robot, please go ask the students on that team how the robot works and what their process was (i.e. design, fabrication, training, project management, etc.) before jumping to such conclusions. You might learn something to help your team.

The other issue is giving into the temptation of having the most highly qualified people (usually mentors) do all of the work to the extent of crowding out of student participation. All teams want to put their best foot forward. It slows the process down if you have to incorporate less experienced students into the mix. But you have to bear in mind what the point of the program is. As much as we all love to win, the success of your team should be measured by how many highly engaged STEM students it turns out.