Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative

[AustinSchuh]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

At one of our district events, FRC judges came in and asked our team, a few dozen times, in a few different ways, who built the robot. Before entering our pit, I happened to overhear that they were trying to figure out "who the mentor built robots are". The questions they asked my team were "gotcha" questions, all phrasing essentially the same question in different ways until the kids referred to a sponsor or mentor as having helped with some portion of the robot, at which point the judges would harp on that point. I believe these were the culture judges, not the technical judges, and they simply would not ask about anything other than different ways to phrase the question "did your mentors build and program the robot". We were not asked about our STEM outreach, our business plan, our team spirit, and ultimately I can't help but fear we were disqualified from those awards at that district because our kids' answers to the "mentor built" questions didn't pass the judges' standards.

I wasn't there when our students were being judged at one of our regionals, but that was the impression that they got as well. The judges were looking for a gotcha as well. The judges figured out that our vision code wasn't student programmed, and then were done talking to the students. Completely ignoring the fact that the students contributed in other areas, and that the number of students inspired by us having cool vision was way higher than would have been the case if the entire project had dropped through the cracks. We target similar amounts of work on a subsystem being done by students as by the mentors, and that's perfectly legal by the rules, and our decision. We have students doing code reviews, writing unit tests, and helping simulate how the robot works, and assume that is how all code is written. That's a huge success, and is only really possible with significant mentor involvement and drive. Next year, I think we'll have the students tell the judges that "they found a library to do that" to deflect those questions.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Which is a shame.

Originally Posted by AustinSchuh

I wasn't there when our students were being judged at one of our regionals, but that was the impression that they got as well. The judges were looking for a gotcha as well. The judges figured out that our vision code wasn't student programmed, and then were done talking to the students. Completely ignoring the fact that the students contributed in other areas, and that the number of students inspired by us having cool vision was way higher than would have been the case if the entire project had dropped through the cracks. We target similar amounts of work on a subsystem being done by students as by the mentors, and that's perfectly legal by the rules, and our decision. We have students doing code reviews, writing unit tests, and helping simulate how the robot works, and assume that is how all code is written. That's a huge success, and is only really possible with significant mentor involvement and drive. Next year, I think we'll have the students tell the judges that "they found a library to do that" to deflect those questions.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by AustinSchuh

I wasn't there when our students were being judged at one of our regionals, but that was the impression that they got as well. The judges were looking for a gotcha as well. The judges figured out that our vision code wasn't student programmed, and then were done talking to the students. Completely ignoring the fact that the students contributed in other areas, and that the number of students inspired by us having cool vision was way higher than would have been the case if the entire project had dropped through the cracks. We target similar amounts of work on a subsystem being done by students as by the mentors, and that's perfectly legal by the rules, and our decision. We have students doing code reviews, writing unit tests, and helping simulate how the robot works, and assume that is how all code is written. That's a huge success, and is only really possible with significant mentor involvement and drive. Next year, I think we'll have the students tell the judges that "they found a library to do that" to deflect those questions.

Those judges really missed out on the stunning, inspiring, and borderline intimidating amount of passion and knowledge your students have for the machines your team builds. It really blew me away, for what it's worth.

[apache8080]

Originally Posted by AustinSchuh

I wasn't there when our students were being judged at one of our regionals, but that was the impression that they got as well. The judges were looking for a gotcha as well. The judges figured out that our vision code wasn't student programmed, and then were done talking to the students. Completely ignoring the fact that the students contributed in other areas, and that the number of students inspired by us having cool vision was way higher than would have been the case if the entire project had dropped through the cracks. We target similar amounts of work on a subsystem being done by students as by the mentors, and that's perfectly legal by the rules, and our decision. We have students doing code reviews, writing unit tests, and helping simulate how the robot works, and assume that is how all code is written. That's a huge success, and is only really possible with significant mentor involvement and drive. Next year, I think we'll have the students tell the judges that "they found a library to do that" to deflect those questions.

I have heard of other students and mentors saying that about other teams but I didn't realize that judges were doing that also. It is a shame that people think that any robot that works really well and also looks well engineered is done entirely by mentors. This is really something that has made me angry over the last few years because you will find many people who try to take credit away from students who worked really hard to make a good robot by claiming it was mentor built.

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by Metonym

Back in PNW, we sent an aux feed to the projectors that could be independently controlled from the program(livestream) feed, but would usually display the same view as the program feed. This allowed us to let the audience display be up on the projector all throughout alliance selection and awards making it easier on the people in the venue to see the changes to the alliances and awards, while also letting the people at home see everything that is happening. This is something I should have remembered for Indiana's events this past season, but rest assured it will be fixed next season.

Champs could have done the same thing if they knew it was going to be a problem. It can be as simple as plugging a cable into a different output or extending a previously run cable to reach a different output of the switcher.

I find that interesting as supposedly our 2015 AV was based of PNW's 2014 setup. I think that would be nice if we had the equipment (which AFAIK we don't).

[chamingflicken]

I thought the pits and fields could have been organized a bit better. We were in Archimedes, and our pit was the furthest away it could be from the drive team entrance to the dome. Meanwhile, our field was also the furthest one from the main entrance to the dome. Would have been nice to have a bit more balance there so our drive team didn't have to leave 35 minutes before the match began.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by AustinSchuh

I wasn't there when our students were being judged at one of our regionals, but that was the impression that they got as well. The judges were looking for a gotcha as well. The judges figured out that our vision code wasn't student programmed, and then were done talking to the students. Completely ignoring the fact that the students contributed in other areas, and that the number of students inspired by us having cool vision was way higher than would have been the case if the entire project had dropped through the cracks. We target similar amounts of work on a subsystem being done by students as by the mentors, and that's perfectly legal by the rules, and our decision. We have students doing code reviews, writing unit tests, and helping simulate how the robot works, and assume that is how all code is written. That's a huge success, and is only really possible with significant mentor involvement and drive. Next year, I think we'll have the students tell the judges that "they found a library to do that" to deflect those questions.

If 971 is a mentor built robot, then 1678's robot was built by 971's mentors! More seriously, we know how much guidance the Schuh's provide to us and other teams. Yes, Mike always has on knee pads, but they are educators first.