STIMS Registration Guide

[Doug Frisk]

Originally Posted by topgun

I just checked the paper registration stuff.

http://www.firstinspires.org/sites/d...-2016-2017.pdf

It's intrusive to have a free/reduced lunch question on this form. This isn't something I need to know and it isn't something that FIRST needs to know.

They have always had the race/ethnicity questions at the team level, where I as the Lead Mentor could simply put in the counts or not. Same for gender.

What value does this provide? We take any and all students that want to be part of a team that does cool stuff centered around robots. I don't care about their race, gender, lunch status and neither should FIRST. The only thing FIRST truly needs is the second page that absolves them of liability.

I expect that the Free/Reduced lunch demographic data is required for reporting purposes for various states that track it on a per team level.

[Katie_UPS]

Originally Posted by topgun

It's intrusive to have a free/reduced lunch question on this form. This isn't something I need to know and it isn't something that FIRST needs to know.

They have always had the race/ethnicity questions at the team level, where I as the Lead Mentor could simply put in the counts or not. Same for gender.

What value does this provide? We take any and all students that want to be part of a team that does cool stuff centered around robots. I don't care about their race, gender, lunch status and neither should FIRST. The only thing FIRST truly needs is the second page that absolves them of liability.

They should care about it so they can track the demographics of the students they're affecting and work to make up for the "holes" in their program. FIRST would be a really crappy program if it only served the needs of middle-to-upper class white boys, but if they don't know that they're only serving the needs of those people then they don't know they need to fix it. Additionally, that information is useful when applying for grants or "selling" the program to new sponsors and partnerships. I don't understand why this makes you uncomfortable. Gender, race, and economic status affect your students' life experiences and how they perceive things... you probably should care.

----

Thank you for making this guide! I'll be passing it along to my team to hopefully speed up the process of getting our students registered!

[marshall]

Originally Posted by topgun

I just checked the paper registration stuff.

http://www.firstinspires.org/sites/d...-2016-2017.pdf

It's intrusive to have a free/reduced lunch question on this form. This isn't something I need to know and it isn't something that FIRST needs to know.

They have always had the race/ethnicity questions at the team level, where I as the Lead Mentor could simply put in the counts or not. Same for gender.

What value does this provide? We take any and all students that want to be part of a team that does cool stuff centered around robots. I don't care about their race, gender, lunch status and neither should FIRST. The only thing FIRST truly needs is the second page that absolves them of liability.

Well this is new and I'm going to guess how it came about...

FIRST has been asking teams for this kind of demographic data for some time and most teams have not filled it out in TIMS. I know this because NC teams have been filling out this data while many other states have had trouble collecting it (Shout out to Marie for asking NC teams to collect it and then sharing it back with us).

Now they are shifting the burden to students/parents, which is really where it should have been all along because that is how they can best collect accurate data. The problem is their new online registration system is atrocious and no one wants to use it or can figure it out.

This likely started off as a plan to collect this data via the web form (but now that is a disaster) and then a paper form as secondary.

I suspect this is coming from two or three different groups within FIRST that are all trying to get this data for different reasons (grants, providing to existing sponsors, using it to get new sponsors onboard, giving back to the community, etc). You'll notice that the forms are actually two separate forms with different footers and no page count.

So questions I have for Frank...

1) Are both of these forms actually required?
2) What happens to my team if I don't turn these in?
3) What am I to do with Parents who don't speak English natively?
4) What guarantee do I (the responsible mentor "I") have that the volunteers handling these forms have been through data privacy training?
5) How is this data handled and transmitted to FIRST from the local events?
6) Why are mentors being asked to collect this data? (Why not turn it into you on the bottom of the form? Don't give it to me.)

Keep in mind you're asking for racial information, financial information, date of birth, location information, and gender information FOR MINORS on these forms. Yeah, this is not OK as it stands.

All that being said, this is good data to have and it should be collected but NOT LIKE THIS.

[Alyssa]

I mean they do have "I prefer not to answer" as an option for most of the intrusive questions, and it is being filled out by the minors parent or guardian.

That does not by any means that I think STIMS is done well, hence the creation of a guide that took 4 hours to make. Hopefully the guide helps some other families and students save some of that time though.

[marshall]

Originally Posted by Alyssa

I mean they do have "I prefer not to answer" as an option for most of the intrusive questions, and it is being filled out by the minors parent or guardian.

That's in the online version. The paper version has no mention of that option. Hence my frothing at the mouth post above.

[Alyssa]

Originally Posted by marshall

That's in the online version. The paper version has no mention of that option. Hence my frothing at the mouth post above.

Fair enough. I've never had to work with the paper version or encouraged students to work with it, the online version is enough of a nightmare.

[marshall]

Originally Posted by Alyssa

Fair enough. I've never had to work with the paper version or encouraged students to work with it, the online version is enough of a nightmare.

Same here up until this year... that online process is too much for some of my parents and I don't have the time to play tech support for this new system.

I'm extremely grateful for you folks for creating those instructions. They are great and I'll be able to use them for some of my students but not all.

[Alyssa]

Originally Posted by marshall

Same here up until this year... that online process is too much for some of my parents and I don't have the time to play tech support for this new system.

I'm extremely grateful for you folks for creating those instructions. They are great and I'll be able to use them for some of my students but not all.

Happy to help

[anushad]

Thank you so much for this! Is there any way you could please post a .ppt or a google doc of this? Or even please post a .pdf with smaller slides? This would be a lot to print out, and we'd really appreciate if you could help us out. Either way, thank you so much from team 2876!

[bkahl]

Originally Posted by anushad

Thank you so much for this! Is there any way you could please post a .ppt or a google doc of this? Or even please post a .pdf with smaller slides? This would be a lot to print out, and we'd really appreciate if you could help us out. Either way, thank you so much from team 2876!

Here's a viewable google doc:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1sp...q_X4kamjaKvyco

[anushad]

Thank you so much! We'll definitely be distributing this at our next meeting.

[Trying to Help]

Thank you! The Google docs version has gone out to the team.

[marshall]

FIRST has updated the consent and release form and it no longer includes the demographic survey portion:

http://www.firstinspires.org/sites/d...-2016-2017.pdf

[turbo1s1k]

I have a student who is not able to register due to the fact that she is 18 already. Anyone have any tips or tricks to get her registered in STIMS?

[mjc49]

We had a couple of students who were over 18 last season. If my memory servers me right, I had to send the invitation to them instead of their parents. Even with that, they said they had a hard time, but I don't recall the specific issues they encountered.