FAHA: Too much help from mentors?

[Kris Verdeyen]

Dear Concerned FIRST Participant,

Your concerns have echoed those of many of us over the years. FIRST has a reputaion of being a "High school robotics contest", and that can lead to come concerns about engineer involvement. "High school students could never have built that," the naysayers say, and the rub is, they're right. The average high school student knows, if anything, very little about mechanical, electrical, and software design and farication. And it's not the goal of the FIRST program to teach them. As the wise old man of these forums* has said, it's not our job as engineer mentors to teach high school students engineering in six weeks. How could we? It has taken years for we engineers to be able to do what we do.

So what is FIRST all about? As has been pointed out time and time again, the key letter in the acronym is the second - Inspiration. It is our job as engineer mentors to make student want to pursue a career in a scientific or engineering field. That's it. The teams you see with really cool robots, like the one you described, have really cool robots because a really cool robot is more inspiring than one that you spend six weeks building with your buddies only to find out, when it's all over, it doesn't turn.

Put the question like this - would you be more likely to want to be an engineer when you grow up if you helped a team of engineers spend six weeks building an incredible robot, or if you spent six frustrating weeks banging your head against what turned out to be a pretty simple problem?

*Dr. Joe - sorry, after a search I haven't been able to find the post.

[generalbrando]

Originally Posted by Kris Verdeyen

It is our job as engineer mentors to make student want to pursue a career in a scientific or engineering field. That's it.

That's the way it works in my mind. I've seen teams where the engineers have the students gather around the robot on Thursday in competition and explain how the robot works and what their strategy is. It saddens me simply because I love working on the robot so much and apparently those students did not. However, if those students are better off because of their experience, I'm not one to complain.

On a slightly contrary note, I would say that I expect more from teams that place high year after year. If your team is doing well in competition, that's great and I won't be upset if the champion robot is entirely engineer built. However, I expect more students to be involved simply because of the amazing inspiration that winning is when you are involved in creating that work. It's a horrible loss otherwise.

[Greg Perkins]

back in my sophmore days in HS when i was first introduced to FIRST, our team 151 was a really great team. our primary sponsor, SANDERS/BAE SYSTEMS believed that FIRST should be student oriented. so thats what they did. now due to the fact that our team did not have a Machine shop that was readily available to students, BAE did all the Milling, Lathe work, and miscellanous. The students then came in, assembled all of the parts, wired it all, coded it all, and made one heck of a machine.

in 2002, our team took a new route, giving some of the students the opprotunity to machine parts. 4 other students including myself, had a machine shop class during the day so we were qualified to make parts. we made a killer set of mag 5 spoke wheels for the bot out of aluminum, taking about a week; during school, and after schooll; to make all 10 of them. Then BAE also did the Milling of the chassis, and parts too. But none-the-less the students still got to "make their robot" by assembeling it, and doing all the other stuff to it, to make it competitive. that year we were semifinalists in our division at Nationals.

in 2003 we had a major turning point. Tyler, a senior, was hired by BAE to work after school in a machine shop at the facility. this was a huge difference in the aspect of how 151 had operated. the tube aluminum was cut, and BAE welded it together. but all the other parts that were made for it were done by students. that year we had a lot of problems with the machine, but hey, what can you expect from a team who went from assembling parts, to now making parts, it was more of a Time Management adjustment.

Now my FIRST travels take me to college. I go to a tech. school in Concord, NH. and Pembroke Academy is just down the road. so this year i decided i would help them out. it was quite a new experience for me. this team the mentors did as much work as teh students. since i was a "mentor" i expected to make sure a kid didnt hack his arm off w/ the sawzall, but no, i was actually building the robots along side the kids! i really enjoyed it! Thanks Pembroke! Good Luck this year!


now for my Opinion on this subject. I think that the robots that are entirely made by engineers is really unfair for those teams who can barely make their robot drive. I think first is about showing kids how to do it, not do it for them so now they know. let the kids do as much as they can so they are gaining knowledge. and if someone screws something up, dont go awal on them, let them know what they did wrong, and let them fix it. ive seen some mentors get pretty hotheaded over a simple mistake by a student, and i believe that that is very uncalled for. so all in all, i think that students should have AS MUCH input into the robot so they get something out of it.

[tenfour]

Students have got to be exposed to engineering. As such, they have to have some involvement in the process.

I have been a student in a Robotics team for 3 years, then mentored a FLL team, and now I"m back mentoring my old robotics team. From this, I have learned that you should help the team build a nice robot, but not too much. If you give the students as much as they can handle, but not alot more, they will grow. To little and they will not. Too much, and they will begin to hate the process.

[Koko Ed]

When I joined the X-Cats two years ago to mentor the animation team Greg(who is now the animation mentor for Webster Sparx) and I both agreed how blessed we were to have four wonderful, enthusiatic and talented girls who took over the project from day one. They were practically climbing over each other to work on the computers. We both alos knew that there was no way that future teams would compare to them and we were right.
Our philosiphy on the X-Cats is the kids have to at least do one year working on the robot so they may do only one year on animation, so every year we get a whole new animation team and kids of varying degrees of talent,ambition and work ethic. 3D Studio Max is a bear of a program especially of you are new to it and the last two years I have found myself having to hustle just to finish the projects with all-nighters while attending college and working full-time.
One is I think I have poor communication skills as a mentor because planning still equates to a rush job in the end with less than desirable results. I need to make sure the kids know where the project stands better instead of just hunkering down after hours and going it alone. It definately makes me rethink strategies to take advantage of the kids I get. Every year I'll grow a little more from the mistakes I make. That's a good thing.

[Bytor]

KoKo Ed makes a good point. This will continue to be a hot-button topic simply because the make-up of each team changes from year to year. Kids leave the team, younger team members mature (the difference between 9th graders and seniors is astonishing), new members join, mentors gain experience and change as well.

Since the make-up and personalities of the team will change year-by-year, the role of team mentors will continue to evolve. Know how "much" to mentor is just one of many challenges that face team mentors every season.

Fortunately, most of us mentor for the big bucks!

Peace