"Gamifying" Documentation

[ASD20]

Originally Posted by s-neff

It sounds to me like driving that motivation is the topic of this thread? Interested in hearing "what works" on other teams.

Ideally the recognition of the utility and importance of documentation is motivation enough. Even forgetting the fact that a BOM is needed to compete, good documentation can increase your chances of winning engineering awards. Documentation not only makes your design seem a lot more professional, it will also likely help you with being able to talk to the judges well. It can also help raise your standing in the FRC community. Yes, part of the reason we always talk about teams like 254 and 1114 is that they build really good robots, but we also talk about them because they document their really good robots really well.

Having said that, I know it takes time to gain an appreciation of the value of documentation. After 4 years, my team is just starting to truly appreciate it. In the meantime, I would say that the best way to motivate students to document is to make it clear that it is looked highly upon when selecting team leadership. Let me be clear, this is not bribery at all because by working on documentation, students are showing many of the traits and skills needed to be a good leader. I am going to use the example of the BOM, though this also applies to other forms of documentation. I can't think of a better way to learn about every single part on the robot and what it does, than creating a spreadsheet of every single part on the robot. Writing the BOM also familiarizes you with FRC suppliers, the KOP, and the manual. It also demonstrates a lot of good leadership skills like organization, attention to detail, commitment, and being willing to do less desirable jobs for the sake of the team.

[s-neff]

Originally Posted by alecmuller

For me, the motivation is to have a library of modular robot components we can draw from on the very first day of kickoff. These components (loaders, shooters, kickers, manipulators, etc) are far more useful when they're well-documented - whether you're using them as-is or customizing the design.

I want a mechanism library. I don't know if my students want one. They seem to like Just Making Things.

Originally Posted by ASD20

Ideally the recognition of the utility and importance of documentation is motivation enough.

Ideal worlds are for physicists...

Having said that, I know it takes time to gain an appreciation of the value of documentation.

It takes experiencing the documentation being valuable, for appreciation to set in. "I didn't know what to do, until I found a solution in last year's documentation." Maybe when i'm in "teacher-mode", working in explicit references to "you know how to do this, you did it last year."?

In the meantime, I would say that the best way to motivate students to document is to make it clear that it is looked highly upon when selecting team leadership. Let me be clear, this is not bribery at all because by working on documentation, students are showing many of the traits and skills needed to be a good leader. I am going to use the example of the BOM, though this also applies to other forms of documentation. I can't think of a better way to learn about every single part on the robot and what it does, than creating a spreadsheet of every single part on the robot. Writing the BOM also familiarizes you with FRC suppliers, the KOP, and the manual. It also demonstrates a lot of good leadership skills like organization, attention to detail, commitment, and being willing to do less desirable jobs for the sake of the team.

I like this carrot. Do note this is a carrot that doesn't always work for every student. It worked on me, but I am not every student.