[FRC Blog] Stop Build Day Survey Results

[Michael Hill]

Originally Posted by Hitchhiker 42

On the contrary, that makes sense. If you already have the resources to build a second robot, why change the rule (other than money, but you already have that), whereas teams that don't have enough resources would more likely ask for no stop build day.

TL;DR High-resource teams in general favor the status quo which is understandable.

From what I've seen on here (granted it's a small and skewed sample), many of the high resource teams want to do away with it. I mean...it's pretty simple, building 2 robots is harder/more expensive than building one. We aren't a super high resource team, but we've managed to build two nearly identical robots the past couple years, and it can be really straining on time and money, but we still have the cost-benefit analysis telling us it's worth it to build two. If we got rid of the stop build day, we would benefit greatly, if not bigly.

[Basel A]

Originally Posted by Michael Hill

From what I've seen on here (granted it's a small and skewed sample), many of the high resource teams want to do away with it. I mean...it's pretty simple, building 2 robots is harder/more expensive than building one. We aren't a super high resource team, but we've managed to build two nearly identical robots the past couple years, and it can be really straining on time and money, but we still have the cost-benefit analysis telling us it's worth it to build two. If we got rid of the stop build day, we would benefit greatly, if not bigly.

This exactly is the situation my team is in. My team probably would not work more without a stop build, but we would do better anyway because we wouldn't be wasting time or money on a second robot.

[mathking]

My own feelings, expressed more than once here, is that I agree that there would be a higher percentage of "good" robots at competition if we got rid of stop build. There just doesn't seem to be any question, because the extra time is not going to hurt anyone on the average (sure there will be an occasional team that breaks something) because on the average more time will yield better robots. There is no down side to getting rid of stop build in terms of the quality of robots.

I also think it is pretty clear that getting rid of stop build day will lead to decreased participation. I don't buy that there are a lot of people out there who would participate but can't stand the time constraints and so they choose not to. But there will be lots of students and some mentors for whom the increased time commitment will be a deal breaker.

My team will keep doing FRC for the foreseeable future. I have at one time or another been involved in just about every big educational robotics competition in some way, and FRC is the one that generates the most interest and excitement. It is also the one that allows for the biggest team in terms of giving more kids what to do. If we got rid of stop build, however, I would have to find someone else to lead the team. And we would lose a lot of our members. So my preference is to keep stop build.

Side Note:
My ultimate (pipe??) dream would be that almost every school has a robotics team, like they have a basketball team, a soccer team, a band, a track team... FIRST could become the national organization that sets the rules, and they could host the Championship level event(s). Each state or region has its own governing body, like they do for athletics, and hosts its own tournaments. I won't lie, I would love to win an Ohio Capital Conference Robotics title before I retire. I think we have 8 teams now representing 16 high schools total, so we are getting to where that might be feasible.

[Collin Fultz]

Originally Posted by mathking

Side Note:
My ultimate (pipe??) dream would be that almost every school has a robotics team, like they have a basketball team, a soccer team, a band, a track team... FIRST could become the national organization that sets the rules, and they could host the Championship level event(s). Each state or region has its own governing body, like they do for athletics, and hosts its own tournaments.

How is this different from districts?

[Chris is me]

One thing I want to bring up, again, is if the schedule for competition can be changed so that Week 1 starts on the 46th day of build season (or as close as possible). This way, teams that want that hard deadline at six weeks can just go to a Week 1 event, and teams that don't can go to later events. Stop Build Day or not, teams work hard to be mostly done by their first event, and most teams won't completely rebuild their robot after this event (but I hope many will make improvements). This won't make build season any longer, really.

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by Collin Fultz

How is this different from districts?

It sounds like a more extreme version-- one where even more organizing and responsibility has been shifted to even more local planning groups.

Side note: I find it really interesting to consider architectures for FRC beyond the regionals/districts systems. I don't think districts is the end of the road if we ever truly want to get to an FRC team in every high school.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by cadandcookies

Side note: I find it really interesting to consider architectures for FRC beyond the regionals/districts systems. I don't think districts is the end of the road if we ever truly want to get to an FRC team in every high school.

I believe it's called VRC, or FTC.

FRC is a very massive structure; I would suspect that having an FRC team in every high school isn't ever going to happen. (FRC student, maybe. See also "community team".) But the "smaller" competitions that are more accessible can get into schools more easily.

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by EricH

I believe it's called VRC, or FTC.

FRC is a very massive structure; I would suspect that having an FRC team in every high school isn't ever going to happen. (FRC student, maybe. See also "community team".) But the "smaller" competitions that are more accessible can get into schools more easily.

No, I don't believe future architectures for FRC are exactly FTC or VRC. I think there are definitely things to learn from those programs, but I don't think any architecture for FRC looks precisely like either of those programs. I suspect it may look like a hybrid of existing high school sports models and existing structures for robotics programs, provided "FRC in every high school" is a goal.

Also, by future architectures, I'm not really talking next five years, but next twenty or more. Not exactly practical, but fun to think about.

[mathking]

Originally Posted by Collin Fultz

How is this different from districts?

It is similar to the district model. It's different mostly because of scale. I think that most folks are right that there will probably never be FRC in every school, just as not every school has a football team. Some districts will obviously have teams that span multiple schools. Some won't choose to have a program. But in general if FRC became accepted enough that state athletic associations were organizing tournaments, it would create an expectation that schools would field teams.

One of the things that drives me nuts about the "FRC is too expensive for schools" argument is that fielding an FRC team is not intrinsically more expensive than fielding a lot of sports teams or other activities. If a school has a band that goes to competitions the odds are that its budget dwarfs that of the FRC team. Our FRC team would be in the mid range (we have between 60 and 80 most years) of team/activity sizes at our school, and in the mid range of cost. But it is expected that the school will field a football team, a band, a soccer team and track team. So they do it. I want to get FRC there. As I have said, I have been involved in form or another in most competitive robotics programs at one time or another. In my experience FRC is the one that generates the most excitement. It is the one that best scales up for larger teams. (For example, we have FTC. Two teams. If we didn't have FRC and most of the kids who did FRC decided to do FTC, we would need 7 - 10 teams. And it would not be cheaper than FRC.) And I think I will stop here because I don't want to pull the thread too far sideways.

[JohnSchneider]

Not entirely sure why FIRST insists on doing these surveys in this style. Do the survey where votes are 1 per team. If FRC wants to be a "sport" it needs to adopt a sport's style approach to voting on the rules. Team owners only.

[EricH]

Part of the problem is that if they want volunteers' input, they can't do 1/team.

The other part is that they may be trying to decipher if there's a disconnect between students and mentors.

And there's also the "I mentor multiple teams" option, as some mentors have 2 or 3 teams.


And you also have the problem of how many people actually TAKE the surveys! This one's actually relatively high participation: 9K people (not all of whom finished), 2100+ teams (offhand, that's about 2/3 of active teams).

[mathking]

Also, the "owners only" is the model for pro sports rules. It is not the model for high school sports. In HS sports there is generally a national federation that establishes the general "game rules" and a state association may make some minor changes. Any changes or adaptations of those rules tends to only be done after they survey coaches, administrators and players.

[JohnSchneider]

Originally Posted by mathking

Also, the "owners only" is the model for pro sports rules. It is not the model for high school sports. In HS sports there is generally a national federation that establishes the general "game rules" and a state association may make some minor changes. Any changes or adaptations of those rules tends to only be done after they survey coaches, administrators and players.

High school sports is a bad example. There are actual divisions in high school sports to separate teams with more resources. But even then within the same division schools with more students dont have more voting power....

[EricH]

Originally Posted by JohnSchneider

High school sports is a bad example. There are actual divisions in high school sports to separate teams with more resources. But even then within the same division schools with more students dont have more voting power....

I don't know if you noticed, but there is a section of the report that includes the team responses. It's near the end; the data buckets are a bit different than normal due to the methodology.

So they're using the House elections to do the Senate's voting...

[mathking]

Originally Posted by JohnSchneider

High school sports is a bad example. There are actual divisions in high school sports to separate teams with more resources. But even then within the same division schools with more students dont have more voting power....

We were talking about how rules were set, not how competition was divided up. In HS sports the rules are not set by schools at all. There is no voting. Like there is no voting here. A governing body sets them. Changes are generally considered by surveying coaches. Or coaches, administrators and athletes.