What does everyone do about large members involvement?

Our team (663) has been involved with FIRST for four years. We're a small team, but we still struggle with trying to provide an opportunity for everyone to contribute. Whenever I go to a regional competition, and see very large high school teams, I'm left wondering what everyone on the team does.

Our robotics club isn't directly connected to any curriculum at the school, so the kids who join the club all want to get their hands dirty playing with robots. A limited number actually get to work directly with the robot construction, so we have a pretty high turnover rate as the less-involved kids drop out. I'd love to have 30-40 kids on the team, but what would they all do?

[jeremy562]

We are pretty much in the same boat. The problem is getting kids excited about having jobs that are not directly related to actually building or operating the robot. Off the top of my head, here's a short list:

- making signs, buttons, banners, etc
- soliciting for donations
- fundraising (selling stuff)
- documenting the process (video, web site, photos, etc)
- scouting
- keeping track of materials for the B.O.M.
- verifying that everything is legal (and keeping up with the Team Updates)
- cheering

[ngreen]

We have twenty students but like 13 to 14+ different committees from PR to field constructions. Most of the team members are heading a committee and are involved in 3 to four others. Also every committee has one to two mentors as advisors Everybody contibrutes to the design ideas.

Here is a list off the top of my head:

Chairman's Award
Public Relations
Fundraising
Grant Writing
I-Movie
Scrapbook (better name than that, can't remember though)
Financial
Website
Animation
Programming
Graphic Design
Construction
Robot Design and Build -subcommittee ie electronics, pnuematics, arm design, drive design
Logistics
Pit Design
Scouting

Food - This isn't student based but headed by one of the great parents involved.

Also, we have had some standing committees to like Fair Parade Float Committee and others for certain needs.

Thanks for the ideas! We've also tried to get students involved in some of the areas outside robot construction, but we generally find that they're less interested in other areas. Any suggestions on how to keep students motivated, and feeling part of the team, if they're not directly involved in the construction?

I've noticed that open communication, so everyone can contribute ideas, helps. But other specific ideas would be greatly appreciated. Your lists are inspiring me already -- thanks!

[Eric Bareiss]

The key is finding out what the kids WANT to be doing. Not everyone is good at building robots, we all know that. But there are so many aspects of FIRST that it pretty much doesn't matter what you are good at.

This is actually something that the mentors on your team should be doing, but veteran students should feel to help out too. Either keep an eye on someone to see what they are good at or just come out and ask them. Everyone is good at something. If there is someone who hates robots but loves to shoot video, have him make a video montage for the year. If someone has 8 years of carpentry experience, tell them to get cracking on the crate.

When it comes right down to it there are so many things to do that everyone should always have a job. Ask your teacher or engineers how much paperwork and scheduling they have to behind the scenes and you will be amazed. Maybe you should help them with that.

I probably should have explained that I'm one of the mentors. Coming from a technical/computer background, that's the area that I focus on. And when we advertise the "Robotics Club", we mostly attract students who are specifically interested in robotics.

Perhaps the program could be promoted differently, with emphasis on some of these other areas...

[ArJubx]

My team is doing this as a class project (AP Physics C), subsequently fewer people are very motivated to do work. Another bad effect of this is that we only 1 person that is not a senior, so the likelyhood of our team continuing next year is slim, on top of that our school is getting massive renovations starting this summer, so our shop and work areas will not be available for a couple years.

With only 13 people, we are hard pressed to find jobs for everyone that they could do then again we didn't do any of the extra compititions except the animation. So in the end it was 3 or 4 students doing 80% of the work (construction, paperwork management, funding, programming). One issue we seem to find is, with more than 2 or 3 people working on the actual robot just slows the process down because people start tripping over each other. Building a mock up field is a good way to get everyone involved tho, many people can build the parts seperately, and come together for assembly.

[ngreen]

My best advice is to avoid making it a task and try making is something fun that they enjoy. Overplay being a team and underplay the robotics. Give them task that will produce accomplishments. I can not remember how many positive comments our team received from our i-movie and scrapbook last year. The persons who took on this responsibility were able to build something that got just as much praise as our robot.

It is about meeting a person's needs. You almost need a team phychologist to ensure people needs are met. We would but he would tell us all we were nuts (6 weeks of late nights and caffeniated beverages). I'm sure a lot of you have heard of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. This goes from physiological needs: offer pizza and large amount of carbonated beverages, to safety needs: wear your safety glasses, don't jab people with sharp object, ie, "If you jab me one more time I'm not coming back." Hopefully you can meet the first two. The rest start getting harder.

Belonginess: This is definitely an issue. Make everyone on the team feel like they belong. To feel like you belong you must have a productive job on the team. If you sit around while everyone else does something you are not going to feel like you belong and going to think that robotics sucks. It is the mentors and students job to foster a sense of belonginess. If you see someone without a job, take them and teach them something new so they can belong.

Esteem: When people finish that long ardous job they want a little praise for it. It is human nature. That is why people should always post positive comments about people robots on here. People need that praise even if it comes with some improvement ideas. Another way to gain esteem goes with mastery of a skill. You can give a sense of belonginess and instill esteem by teaching someone something new. Think how awesome it feels when you learn or think of something new and you get positive feedback. This is meeting your esteem needs.

Self-actualization: This is the hard one to define and show how you can do it. More or less it means to get that person to be excited and addicted so that they want to do their best and then improve on it. A "To make the best better" kind of thing for you 4-H students out there. People who are self-actualize are the people that are excited to wake up in the morning, the one who will stay to 3 in the morning to finish a task, and who show up to meetings wanting to do as much as they can. It is hard to explain how to meet this need, but it starts by meeting all of the previous needs.

Okay. That was all I had to say. I hope you at least apply some of this to your team. It might not help to make more task but it will make every one of your team better. I'd say start with the physiological needs, yum.

Honestly, I always thought the same thing you do. We have about 20 kids I would say...and we really all do robot related things. Obvoiusly, some people do a lot more work than others. Some come, and don't even get that much work done. However, in our facility (Ex-Cell-O) we need a "buddy" when we use a tool to cut a part (good safety procedure anyway) so it always is helpful to have extra people around to be buddies.
In general, I guess people choose if they want to design, or just build parts... or mainly strategize... but we honestly don't do very much fundraising or any of the spirit stuff.
Maybe we should...

Ellen

[The Lucas]

We can handle more kids on the team this year (above our normal 35) because we now have a full fledged videography team that documents everything we do. We have like 200 tapes. Soon they will start editing this mound of footage into a series of cable public access shows.

Other full time teams that do not work on the bot do things like Animation team and Web team. Chairmans award team is also a good idea if you want to try to win that award. Other teams like building a mascot and making buttons are mostly part-time teams around competition season.

[mrs. p]

i started our team in 1999 and we have learned as the years go by. we usually have a group of about 40 - 55 students that want to be on the team and i agree that finding tasks or jobs for all to feel involved is sometimes challenging as a mentor. as previously mentioned we have a number of groups.

chairman's award
spirit team
animation
web page
driver/human player
field construction
base design
control system
electrical system
arm/manipulator design
project management
scouting
lego league

while everyone cannot be directly involved in the building of the robot every other aspect of the team is needed. to ensure that all of these areas are covered we have a minimum number of hours that students must complete in order to attend specific competitions. through school presentations and word of mouth, students that are not interested in building a robot come forward.

let me know if you want any further specifics.

[Koko Ed]

We have had some teams as large as 50+ kids but have found that it is most efficnt with about 40 kids at the most. We have 32 kids this year (started out with 35) here is how they are divided up.

Model Shop - Parts & Fabrication (2 kids)

Mech 1 - Elevation (5 kids)

Mech 2 - Acquisition (6 kids)

Mech 3 - Drives (5 kids)

PAW - Promotions, Animation and Web Design (7 kids diveded amongst three teams)

Sparkies - Electrical Team (4 kids)

uh oh! That's only 29! We're missing 3 kids on the webpage! D'oh!)

Other assignmetns are for team spirit (Prince or Princess of Positive Propoganda), Driver, Coach and Human player (of course), treasurer, Scout leader, even for Team Mascot.

Thanks -- these are all great ideas! We'll have to think about how to attract kids that aren't specifically interested in building the robot. I'd especially like to see us tap into a talent pool that can help with spirit...

[Redhead Jokes]

Originally Posted by WebWader125

We've also tried to get students involved in some of the areas outside robot construction, but we generally find that they're less interested in other areas. Any suggestions on how to keep students motivated, and feeling part of the team, if they're not directly involved in the construction?

We have 29 students on the book, but generally 15 show up on a good day.

Our rule is they must do something robotically related, and something "other related".

In practice, there's a member who doesn't care to work on the robot, and most of the guys don't want to do anything but something robotically related.

[Terminator6]

Our team divides up work on many levels, we have 4 different parts of the team itself, they are : Operations, Marketing, Graphics, Engineering...Engineering = Robot if you couldnt guess...

within each team we have divisions...or well whenever there are a lot of students we do...for instance marketing has two people..so they really dont need that much organization...however graphics has nine and robot has 15+ (dont remember exactally)...

robot divides itself up into teams representing an aspect of the robot...base, control, hanging, and driveby (10 pt ball), these all change from year to year based on the game

attracting new students can leave you dumbfounded if your not smart...at our school if you say FIRST, they say "huh"...however if you say "the robot team" they say "oh, ok i know what your talking about"...i think that for many people its the same sort of feeling in their school....

i was one of the people in charge of recruiting this year, and id like to think i did a good job...i didnt leave anything up to chance...i got organized...i sent people around the school during our homeroom of sorts to talk to people and hand out fliers...on top of that i made a specific list of things non robot related that they could do...people needed to know the other stuff...

overall we have about 1/4-1/3 people rookie this year on our team...most of them were on graphics and enginnering...but we had half (1) of our marketing new as well....you just need to get the word out...give your recruiters exactally what they need to say...thats what i think helped us get new people