How to Get New Members to Stay?

[Cinnastar047]

Our team has been going through this weird cycle for a few years where every other class has ~15 members on the team, and the other classes will have about 2 members on the team. It's not that we can't attract people, it's that a lot of them will leave after the first few weeks for one reason or another. For example, we started this year with about 20 freshmen and now we are down to 2, 1 of which who has been committed to the team since he started 8th grade. We think we have an idea of what's causing the cycle of no members and tons of members, but we'd like to know what other team do that successfully get their new members to stay. Our usual fall activities include a few offseason events, trying to teach them how to do things that contribute to the team, and planning fun things for the whole team to do, but this year there were a few less fun things to do and all of the freshmen just stopped showing up. Is there anything else we could be doing to get new members to stay on the team?

[Carolyn_Grace]

If this were happening on my team, I'd sit down with students and make a list of things that THEY want to do. Then assign them each aspects of the various activities.

[Chris is me]

The short version is you have to give them a reason to stay.

It's a really complex problem with no answer that's going to guarantee you 100% retention, but here are some places to start:

• Kids have to feel like they can do this. If there isn't enough help and they're expected to jump in on their own, they'll feel lost / incapable and move on. This is where quality mentorship really matters.
• Kids won't want to stay if they feel like they have to "wait their turn" to get involved. Telling new students they get to do the cool stuff only after a few years on the team is a very quick way to make your team very small. Maybe the freshmen won't have the same jobs or responsibilities as a senior, but they should be doing something of value.
• Whatever they are doing, they have to feel like what they did influenced the trajectory of the robot and really mattered in the season. Prototyping is a great way to give kids a sense of ownership of the robot ("my intake made it on the robot!!!") while retaining a strong sense of design direction from leadership.
• In general, kids need mentoring, either from older kids or from adults. Only the most driven and motivated kids will force themselves into their area of interest and demand to learn everything they need right away. Teach kids everything you can before the season so they can contribute during the regular season.

[Jon Stratis]

Chris is Me has it right - people are less likely to leave if they get heavily involved doing something they like. And with robotics, that means strong mentorship that constantly pulls people up.

This past year, my team changed its lettering requirements to include a "lettering project" - basically, something that benefits the team that the student can take ownership of. For example, one student was responsible for the CAW - she spent 5 minutes on it every meeting, and it built out alongside the robot, instead of our usual last minute scramble. She was a freshman, learning as she went (a mentor had to help her understand what everything was, where we purchase stuff from, etc), and it was a great learning tool for her. Another student, a senior this time, wrote an entire scouting system, utilizing the FRC Event API to get data on each match from the FMS. More technical, more nuanced than making the CAW... But that's what the projects let us do - each student can shape their project to their interests and skills, and the difficulty and complexity of the projects grows along with the student. It gives them a lot of buy-in to the team, as they can poi t to it and say "i did that!". And after a few years, the projects will hopefully start to provide the students with a small portfolio they can use for things like college applications/interviews or when applying for internships.. Students pick their own projects, either from a list of things we know we need, or by coming up with something themselves. They have an "assigned mentor" to work with on that project so they always know who to go to for help. We had something like 2/3 of the team complete projects.

[Sperkowsky]

This is not something my team has mastered but we have improved.

We realized we needed more members this year as we were becoming increasingly small.

We had about 50 members show up to our first day. 10 of them previous members. The first day we did a keynote style run down of what we do. The second day we kicked it off with quick training on basic hand tools and power tools. We had about 35 people come to that. We then kicked off our offseason project involving building a brand new robot and competing with it at an offseason. Throughout that sub season we had about 20 people there. By the season I would say we had about 25 people on our team.

My biggest reccomendation is that you have one person accurately delegating responsibilities. Members leave when they get bored and get bored when they don't have something to do.

Also make sure people are trained early so they know what they are doing and don't feel behind everyone.

[Monochron]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

My biggest reccomendation is that you have one person accurately delegating responsibilities. Members leave when they get bored and get bored when they don't have something to do.

This is a big one. Often new students are used to a LOT of structure. School, athletic teams, bands, etc. all have highly structured meetings and events. If there isn't structure to your delegation, new students may get the feeling that the team isn't going anywhere or that they aren't "getting to do anything".

[Cinnastar047]

I think one of the main problems we have with getting new members actively involved is that while we make an effort to teach them how to do things, they often don't get an offseason project to apply their new skills to. Then a lot of them don't retain the knowledge, or in some cases there will be a project for them to practice with but it's only one project and not a lot of people can work on it, so the rest just leave.

[smitikshah]

I really agree with all the points made, and wanted to add to Sam's post regarding our team.

I think most teams have the issue of having a lot of people initially joining and then many people leaving after the first few weeks. Some people leaving is just natural, as they are trying out some things that they don't know if they will like, and later realize that they don't like it too much. However this year we have had more dedicated members than ever before and I think we can attribute it to a few factors:

1.) Things to do - As obvious as this may seem, we didn't really implement it much prior to this year. People would come into the lab - and wouldn't be given anything to do, so then they would just leave and not come back thinking its not their place. This year, we restructured our team, allowing for centralization, and therefore the head always knowing what there is to do and effectively communicating this. We were able to undertake a re-doing of the room, and completely organized the lab for the first time in a while. We also had the offseason bot project. Now we are looking at effective scouting methods and developing outreach. Basically, there is always something to do and something going on.

2.) Opportunities to gain leadership - Going along with the earlier point made regarding restructuring our team, we were previously extremely mentor involved. This year, we for the first time, had a lot of student leadership. This has motivated lots of people to learn what they want and become a student leader in it, and guide the next generation of students.

3.) Teaching - often people see that we are building a robot and get intimidated thinking they have no engineering background and can't help the team. This is a responsibility of the mentors on most teams, however even student leads can help out. Make sure people know what they are doing, and that you are always open to as many questions as anyone can ask.

4.) Making Sure Students Know About FRC - While this may seem obvious, many new students don't know what FIRST is, or what the goals are. Like Sam said, we held a keynote type meeting in the beginning of the year breaking down how there is a new game every year, and what the time frame of the year will look like. We also went into detail of how there are opportunities to do things in non-technical roles like business, marketing, media, scouting, and outreach. We make sure kids know about all these aspects and how we have a variety of skills they can be involved in.

My first year, wouldn't even be called a year. The structure made it hard for me to understand everything I could do, and I was hesitant to "really" join because of lack of skill in engineering. I didn't even know FRC had different yearly competitions until the end of build season (I thought we were building for fun and made a deadline to help us get it done faster). I didn't know what scouting was, and I only came by every once in a while to help clean up. After realizing how ill-informed I was - I was on the verge of quitting. It all seemed too intimidating and I wanted to leave. But because the team was so encouraging I was motivated to stay, and learn everything I needed to, to make up lost ground and became a team leader. After noticing what I mentioned above, I worked with the team in fixing those problems, and now we have such a great turnout. (Everything mentioned happened last year ).

Let me know how everything works out!

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by Cinnastar047

I think one of the main problems we have with getting new members actively involved is that while we make an effort to teach them how to do things, they often don't get an offseason project to apply their new skills to. Then a lot of them don't retain the knowledge, or in some cases there will be a project for them to practice with but it's only one project and not a lot of people can work on it, so the rest just leave.

Based on that I would recommend if you have the money having a few preseason vex teams. With vex more people would be able to get involved and learn applical skills. My team has not personally done this as normally a project like robot improvements could involve everyone we would ever be able to get (we come from a small school) but many teams have had success with this method. Team 254 included.

[Whatever]

If you really want everyone to stay, my suggestion would be to lock the door and not let them leave. Add in some shackles and you can get 100% retention.


The reality is science/engineering is hard. And I don't mean mentally hard but hard on your ego. Most school work is based on coming to preset correct answer. Science/engineering is all about finding out what you don't know or what mistakes you made. A good science experiment in the real world is about getting to the next question. Most real world engineering is about taking the best available information to design something so you can find out what you could have done better. There are a lot of people that don't react well to that - especially if they are used to coming to the correct answer. In addition to the good advice listed already, my suggestion is to make sure that that is a known expectation coming into the program.

[CJ_Elliott]

Don't have your first two team meetings revolve around safety, team constructs, or anything that gets new members out of the mindset that they are building things. As soon as they start to become bored or frustrated from the lack of doing anything, they will leave most of the time.

[smitikshah]

Originally Posted by CJ_Elliott

Don't have your first two team meetings revolve around safety, team constructs, or anything that gets new members out of the mindset that they are building things. As soon as they start to become bored or frustrated from the lack of doing anything, they will leave most of the time.

That sounds interesting - might have to try that next school year.

[MailmanDelivers]

Originally Posted by CJ_Elliott

Don't have your first two team meetings revolve around safety, team constructs, or anything that gets new members out of the mindset that they are building things. As soon as they start to become bored or frustrated from the lack of doing anything, they will leave most of the time.

What about watching old game animations and talking about designs for that?

[Cinnastar047]

Originally Posted by MailmanDelivers

What about watching old game animations and talking about designs for that?

That sounds really interesting, and I can see that working, but they tried that in my freshmen year and it was really confusing at first, for me at least. I think it has to be executed correctly, like not just showing it to a large crowd of people all at once. I think it works better showing a few people at a time to make sure they're actually paying attention and that they understand the objective. When you talk to a large group all at once, a lot of times most of the group will stay silent and let two or three people do all the talking, so they don't all get the same experience.

[dirtbikerxz]

So give me advice on this guys. We always get over 20 new students (freshman) who signup on the "i have interest" sheet. But as soon as they find out that there is no way that there is a huge chance that they wont get to step on the field until they are atleast juniors, and even then they have to be better than others to get that position, 18 our of 20 people leave. This year we only retained one freshman. I try everything I can to keep them interested. I ask what they would like to do, I try to guide them and show them exactly how things need to be done, but they simply don't come back. Especially freshman, 90 perecent of freshman who join are super immature and kick the 2014 balls around and try to drill each others brains out no matter how much I and my mentors try to stop them, until eventualy we have to ask them to stop or leave. What do I do to get them to stop doing that.

Also out of the existing team (11 students) only 4 students actively take part during build season. SO that leads to us 4 having to do more than one task (like cading and programming and building for me). Since build season happens during baseball, soccer, and track season, the other 7 simply can't imagine skipping a day or two of practice a week to do robotics (even though I try to explain that I can find time from playing soccer, and two of the other three also do sports).
Anyone have any advice to rectify both of these problems? Thanks in advance guys.