When do mentors go too far?

[Spikey]

Having been to several regionals, and having competed in robotics for four years I have noticed how some teams are completly dominated by thier mentors. When you walk around in the pits instead of students working on the robot you see 4-5 adults working on the robot you begin to wonder what is going on with FIRST. I have seen adults who are a teams scouts, and builders, the students just sit in the stands and drive the robot. I have to ask myself when do mentors go too far. It can be very obvious what is a student built robot, and a robot that has been by adults.
As a team how much involvemnt do your students have? What is the point of robotics if adults are the ones designing, engineering, building, and servicing the robot? When a robot breaks down during a practice match and 4 adults rush out to fix it I ask myself why arn't the students involved?
I have seen pits where students are not even allowed to touch the robot, the adults handle all the mantiance. This problem has been going on for years, and I wonder what everyone else thinks about this subject of adult involvement.
My team is quite small and during a regional almost every student has something to do. People often ask us why we arn't cheering during the competition, and I tell them all of the kids in the stands are busy scouting. We had 9 people who filmed and wathced every single robot in every single match. The rest of our students were in the pits servicing the robot while our mentors stood back and gave pointers from time to time.
I am worried FIRST has become more lopsided with teams who have student built robots vs. adult built robots. I feel as if for some teams that FIRST is about adults building a robot for the kids, then having the kids drive the robot, when do adults and mentors go too far?

[Erin Rapacki]

This is an issue that FIRST usually decides not to handle personally because FIRST is about 'Inspiration' and not exactly 'Education' (search for similar threads on CD, you may find a few). Every team has their own unique way of working together and its difficult to tell which method is better. One hand states that a student-built robot is better because the students get more hands-on work, but on the other hand a mentor-built robot gives students direct insight into more advanced design options and how 'real' teams get things accomplished. Basically, as long as students are being inspired (and the team follows the rules), either way is OK.

This only matters for awards though. A 50/50 student/mentor partnership is the best way to go when it comes to judges; however, I personally like all student-built robots.

[Dave Flowerday]

This discussion has come up over, and over, and over, and over, and.... use the search feature to find out how those discussions went.

In a nutshell, however, FIRST stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. Go read the "About FIRST" at their website. It never says anything about being a competition where students build a robot all by themselves.

Additionally, as many many others have warned, be careful what you assume about the way a team operates. A team may function a lot differently than what you perceive.

I had the same thought when I was at the Greater Toronto Regional and the Finger Lakes Regional. At GTR, I saw three collaborators that where all designed by a GM engineer. To my knowledge the students had no involvement with the development process. At FLR, I saw an adult scouting team and a lone adult working on a robot.

This level of adult involvement takes away from what FIRST is all about, the inspiration of students.

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by plutonium83

To my knowledge the students had no involvement with the development process.

(Emphasis mine) And what knowledge would that be? Did you actually go and talk to them? Did you ask them about the process they used? Were the kids on the team excited to be there and having a good time (perhaps, even, being inspired)?

It's not fair to anyone on those teams to say things like this, even if you think or know it to be correct. There are many many measures of success for a FIRST robotics team and just because one team's measure does not fit the idea you have in your head does not give you the right to criticize them publicly.

[Joe Matt]

*sigh* To each their own, and well, we run our team where the students design, build, and do everything themselves with mentor help. We have students working on the robot all the time in the pits, and our mentors rarely handle it. That's how we run our team. While I do have personal preferences about how a team is run and I wish it was that way for ALL teams, it simply isn't, and with an organization as big as FIRST, there will be contradictions in ideas.

Perhaps if I had my parents do my homework for me, that is certainly a different way to do my schoolwork, but does it make me more knowledgeable?

The same thing applies to robotics. If the adults are doing all the work, that takes away from the student experience, which is why the adults are there in the first place.

[Rich Kressly]

Originally Posted by plutonium83

Perhaps if I had my parents do my homework for me, that is certainly a different way to do my schoolwork, but does it make me more knowledgeable?

Plutonium,

We all understand your views and some will agree with you, but please know that this debate has been circling the CD drain for years with no conclusion. To recap:

1. All teams are different and FIRST places the "Inspiration" and "Recognition" above all else.

2. It is truly impossible to know a team, their process, and who is doing/learning what just by watching them at a regional. I tried it early in my FIRST career and was wrong more than I was right.

3. Each team has the right to do this any way they choose to. FIRST has made its standards on this issue clear, therefore we respect all apporaches and work to create meaningful experiences for students on our individual teams in our own ways.

[BillP]

This always has been, and always will be an issue. In my opinion, there is no standard correct answer. Rather, the balance between mentor (e.g. adult) and student activities must be determined by each individual team, and be revisited each and every season. This balance will be determined by the capabilities of the students AND mentors with the ultimate goal being to provide the most beneficial experience for the students.

For our team, the mentors make every effort to stand back and act as advisers during every aspect of robot design and construction. Sometimes we do feel the need to step in to settle arguments, re-focus the direction of the design/build, and to remind the students of certain physical laws that may prevent their design ideas from working as anticipated (gravity comes to mind). There have also been times when the mentors will develop alternate design implementations and, working alone, build them, to demonstrate more options that we want the students to consider.

For all our efforts to stay in the background as much as possible, sometimes the students still feel that we are "doing too much". In these cases, we just grin and bear it. There have also been times when the students have asked us to do more. As I said, there is no formula to identify the correct balance.

I also think that, the only time this becomes a real problem is when the mentors define exactly what there role will be and that role eclipses the students participation in the design, build or competition. (as in the case mentioned in another post where the students were not even allowed to touch the robot in the pits). Unless this is what the students have requested (not likely), this is wrong.

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by plutonium83

I had the same thought when I was at the Greater Toronto Regional and the Finger Lakes Regional. At GTR, I saw three collaborators that where all designed by a GM engineer. To my knowledge the students had no involvement with the development process. At FLR, I saw an adult scouting team and a lone adult working on a robot.

This level of adult involvement takes away from what FIRST is all about, the inspiration of students.

Wow.

Your attempt to be discreet failed miserably, since there weren't really many three team collaborations at the GTR regional.

You're talking about the NiagaraFIRST.org robots, and you're doing so with no knowledge of our teams. Did you actually talk to anyone on our teams and ask them about our design and build process? Do you think it's fair of you to make assumptions our teams, without taking the time to get the facts.

Here's how things worked for NiagaraFIRST.org this season.

The day after kickoff students and mentors convened at all three schools, and broke into small groups to breakdown the game, and begin the initial brainstorming process. Later on that evening all the groups met at General Motors, and each team presented their findings and ideas. A vote was held, and ideas were narrowed down.

From here the design process began. Different ideas were prototyped as the team worked to finalize a design. Both students and mentors were involved with this process. Once the design was finalized, many finer points were ironed out by our engineers. The students were involved in this process as well.

Most of the fabrication took place at Westlane SS, home of Team 1503. They have an amazing machine shop, with CNC facilities. This is where our frame rails, sprocket hubs and wheels were made. The students from all three teams were an integral part of this process, working with their shop teacher and a GM machinist.

All the robot parts were brought to Governor Simcoe SS, the home of Team 1114. This were most of the robot assembly occurred. Again, the students were the leaders of this process as well. Students from all three schools would work late into the night with GM engineers and other mentors to get the robots built.

I'd say the more than 50% of the wiring on our robot was done my the students as well.

The credo of NiagaraFIRST.org is "Inspiring Future Science & Technology Heroes". We will never claim that our robot is 100% student built. We do have a large degree of engineer involvement. We firmly believe in our process of having the students work with and learn from engineers and other adult mentors. But to say that "the students had no involvement with the development process" is insulting, offensive, and blatantly untrue.

Kevin, I welcome you to come to our pits in Atlanta, so you can see first hand what our team is all about.

---------------
Edit:

Here's a quote from one of my students on Team 1503, from our team's message board. This was in a thread started by one of our engineers asking the kids to describe their proudest moment of the season...

"My personal favourite moment was seeing the robot completed for the first time. Knowing how much of my blood, sweat, and tears went into that thing, I was glad to be done with it, but I was happier to see it fully functional knowing that Chris V, Evelyn, Khalid, Andy and I built the thing from scratch, I, and I'm sure everyone else, almost cried when we shipped it away."

[SuperJake]

I've seen what you are describing, and have wondered to myself the same things that you are talking about. I had the opportunity to speak with several higher-ups in FIRST and got to ask them what they thought of the different team structures. Basically, it boiled down to learning experiences. FIRST is about teaching students about engineering and sparking an excitement for science and technology. That is a pretty broad brush to paint details with, so a lot of what that means is left up to team interpretation.

I know from close experience that some students are only allowed to watch the process of building the robot - from design to fabrication. In these teams, the idea seems to be "watch it done right, and you'll learn how to be a good engineer." I haven't had a chance to speak with students on teams like this, so I don't know their side of the story, but it seems that they are content with this approach. They still get to drive the robot and have fun at the competitions, and I am sure it is fascinating to watch engineers in their natural environment. Kinda like the Discovery Channel in this sense. And I've learned a lot from the Discovery Channel.

I was brought up on Team 365 where there is a good student-engineer relationship. Students and engineers work together to develop ideas with the engineers, everyone votes on the ideas, and the concept is done. The engineers then generate a CAD drawing of the team's ideas since most of the students don't have the knowledge of CAD to generate a model in the same time. Most of the fabrication is done by students unless the use of a few machines is limited due to DuPont's safety regulations. In that case, the mentors do that portion of the machining while the students watch. In the pits, student leaders from every sub-assembly build team lead maintenance of their part with the mentors keeping an eye on everything. The few times a lot of mentors are working on the robot are when the pit crew is out helping another team or there is too much grunt work to do in order to get the robot back together. In this system, the mentors act as a nice helping crutch - this allows the students to learn through experience while having engineers to guide them in the "right direction". I learned a lot here, and this experience has helped me in College to get into all of my internship positions.

My freshman year in College, I was asked to help out a local high school team. They were working out of the basement of their school with the help of their physics teacher. They were very limited in resources, and their only other mentor was a friend of mine from college. The students were clearly enthusiastic and interested in science and technology. In this case, the professor and college mentors only provide a watchful safety eye and encouragement as they learn with the students.

All of these examples promote FIRST's goal of inspiration in science and technology. The students are excited about technology and learning about how things work. To me, that is what FIRST is about. Building a robot is only the end goal of a long journey that is FIRST. The important part is the knowledge you gain from this experience and the ability to take your learnings into the world and pass it on. I don't think either one of these methods are more advantageous than the other, just different.

[Tom Bottiglieri]

Originally Posted by BillP

This always has been, and always will be an issue. In my opinion, there is no standard correct answer. Rather, the balance between mentor (e.g. adult) and student activities must be determined by each individual team, and be revisited each and every season. This balance will be determined by the capabilities of the students AND mentors with the ultimate goal being to provide the most beneficial experience for the students.

For our team, the mentors make every effort to stand back and act as advisers during every aspect of robot design and construction. Sometimes we do feel the need to step in to settle arguments, re-focus the direction of the design/build, and to remind the students of certain physical laws that may prevent their design ideas from working as anticipated (gravity comes to mind). There have also been times when the mentors will develop alternate design implementations and, working alone, build them, to demonstrate more options that we want the students to consider.

For all our efforts to stay in the background as much as possible, sometimes the students still feel that we are "doing too much". In these cases, we just grin and bear it. There have also been times when the students have asked us to do more. As I said, there is no formula to identify the correct balance.

I also think that, the only time this becomes a real problem is when the mentors define exactly what there role will be and that role eclipses the students participation in the design, build or competition. (as in the case mentioned in another post where the students were not even allowed to touch the robot in the pits). Unless this is what the students have requested (not likely), this is wrong.

It seems as if our teams work in a very similar fashion. I like the way our team is balanced now. Students come up with a strategy, then present designs to the team, and we vote on it. This is usually where the most bickering takes place. As for actual robot contruction, adult help really depends on the particular sub group of the team. For instance, our 4 speed transmissions were an iteration of team 33's shifter, and totally redesigned by 2 students. An adult threw in an idea to save some space, but all the actual design and contruction work was done by these 2 students. But, the arm team had 2 dedicated parents who were there almost every night helping machine parts and come up with design technicalities. As for other systems.. the wiring, programming, pneumatics, and end effector were all 100% student done, with no adult help.

One of my best memories from this build season was being able to walk in one day after school, and see about 10 kids all working together, without an advisor to tell them what to do, or how to do it. If we needed to figure out how to do or fix something, we went and researched the problem until we could find the answer. We were all able to work as a team, and get the job done. But at the same time, our team would be nowhere without the support and decication of our amazing advisors.

Before someone replies to this saying "oh, you're making teams who have engineer support look bad", remember this... My freshman year on the team we were sponsored by Johnson and Johnson. We had about 10 engineers who took the teams strategy and did 100% of the work on the robot. The build was boring and I didnt learn much. I fell in love with FIRST because of the competition. Now that sure inspired me... just not in the way it was meant to. I was inspired to stay on the team to go to more competitions and have fun, not to become an engineer. But without that initial inspiration, I would have never come back to find out that we had lost that sponsor, and now needed to do all of the work on the robot in our high school. 2004 was a rough year, but we got the job done. This year we improved by leaps and bounds. I have learned so much and now I know what I want to do with my life, engineering.

As for which is better.. for me I would like to see a 50/50 mix. While it is nice to say we built the entire robot, its brutal when something you've worked on for so long fails because of lack of time and knowledge. That is what I would like to see more of; also why I had the idea of the FPG. It would give every student the chance to create their very own work to share, but at the same time give every student a qualified engineer to fall back on when they are in a hole.

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by plutonium83

Perhaps if I had my parents do my homework for me, that is certainly a different way to do my schoolwork, but does it make me more knowledgeable?

Except your goal with homework is to learn that material. FIRST is not about teaching you how to build a robot - Dean, Woodie, and others have made that quite clear. FIRST is about giving you a chance to interact with engineers and see what the engineering and technology world is all about so that hopefully you'll be interested enough to pursue a career in one of those fields.

Believe me, I know where you are coming from. I spent 3 years as a student on a smaller team. I had the same opinions as you of large teams that "appear" to have everything done by the adults. I heard the rumors (and, sadly, I probably contributed to their spread) that some teams' robots were built "behind the scenes" by the engineers and ship-day was the first day that the students even saw the robot and were then just trained to drive it by the adults. I noticed that the big-name teams tended to win more awards and I "knew" there was some sort of conspiracy there causing it.

The irony is that now I am a member of one of the teams which I used to dislike because I thought it was a team where only adults did the building and the kids didn't get to do anything. Of course I now know that my opinion was misguided. In reality, my current team which I thought was so different from my old team really isn't that different at all. Students on both teams get plenty of opportunity to do hands-on work. The primary exception in raw part fabrication - we use Motorola's shop and because of that there's legal reasons why we can't let students use certain equipment.

Trust me, my team is aware of what some people think about the way our team is run. Even though they don't really know, it's still disappointing that that's what some others think of us (no, you did not say anything about my team, but if we had been at Finger Lakes then you probably would have been just as likely to say "Motorola" instead of "GM").

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by plutonium83

I had the same thought when I was at the Greater Toronto Regional and the Finger Lakes Regional. At GTR, I saw three collaborators that where all designed by a GM engineer. To my knowledge the students had no involvement with the development process.

Well, this is interesting. A direct accusation against 1114, 1503 and 1680. I, like Karthik, can speak directly to the fact that this allegation is incorrect.

For the record, I assisted (in my spare time during a co-op term at GM St. Catharines) with the development of the pre-season prototype robot that would evolve into their competition design. (It did not include the tower and arm found on the competition robots.) The basic design was arrived at through brainstorming and discussion of various ideas, eventually resulting in a concept by first-year McMaster University student (and 1114 alumnus) Tyler Holtzman being chosen for development. (It was his idea to enclose the running gear in an aluminum box beam.) Though GM engineers Derek Bessette and Matthew Vint were quite involved (in their spare time) in the design and construction process of the prototype, so too were the shop teachers at Simcoe and Westlane (Greg Phillips and Ted Clark), and more to the point, so were a multitude of students at both schools, who fabricated parts and suggested modifications to the design.

To say that "the students had no involvement with the development process" is patently false. To further claim that an engineer was solely responsible for the design only compounds the fallacy, and takes credit away from those who were involved.

[zarf]

My team doesn't have corporate sponsors. We have a budget just a bit larger than the allowable robot cost, but good tools. We meet at the US Coast Guard Academy, and we work in the engineering building's power lab.

We have one adult mentor, Captain Wilczynski, who oversees the project and makes sure we stick to schedule. His main role is to try and keep the Academy cadets from slacking off, taking on ideas more ambitious than they have time to do, and getting behind schedule. That and to teach us the last parts of the Mechanical Engineering curriculum here.

We have another adult mentor, Master Chief Griswold, who works in the machine shop, keeps everything orderly, and teaches cadets how to use the tools and build things. If you go to him and ask how to build a particular part, he can always suggest something. He also knows exactly where to go to get supply of any basic parts such as gears, springs, aluminum, etc.

This year we had three cadet mentors. Cadets are basically college students, with a bit of military weirdness thrown on top. We did most of the work, because it was hard to get all the high-schoolers together at the Coast Guard Academy. Also, there were safety rules about using the power tools, and the high-schoolers could not be in the lab without a cadet mentor. Among the high-schoolers' tough schedules, and the cadets never being permitted to miss a class or a military obligation, the high-schoolers could only work on the robot once or twice a week, for a few hours at a time.

So what we did is, first, in the brainstorming part of the project, we got all the cadets and students together and brainstormed ideas for the robot. They built small models with LEGO Mindstorms, we threw three main ideas on the blackboard. We split up and discussed techniques in groups, and then the cadets built prototypes out of wood. We met again with the high-schoolers to discuss what we actually wanted to build. We tried to keep them in the decision-making process, but it just wasn't possible to involve them in the full build. One place where there was a large amount of high-schooler involvement was in the programming; there was only one cadet (myself) who knew how to program, and there were a few high-schoolers and one parent. So we met more often than the building team--which I was also a part of.

So how did it work out? Probably about 10-70-20, adults-cadets-high-schoolers. Was it bad? I don't think so... The high-schoolers said we really made them feel like part of the team, and we built a robot that really was much like they'd discussed and planned. I think the biggest thing was attitude. Talking to the high-schoolers just like talking to the other cadets, and being calm but not fake.

At the Long Island regional, I saw a lot of good teams, but one memory that stuck out was a team close to the stairs down to the pit. One guy on the team was yelling at everybody around him, "If you're not building on the robot, get out of the pit! Get out!" Really stressing out.

Admittedly, the constant vaguely-pumping-up music and announcements on the speakers led to an environment where it was nearly impossible to communicate. I do wish that would change--the noise level felt constantly above safe levels. I spent most of my time there in ear plugs. The environment set up there was stressful and a little frustrating, when trying to get work done. I don't know why FIRST does that. I guess the music is supposed to add to the atmosphere, but the music is artificial, and the atmosphere generated by the (much less noisy) sound of tools, arguments, cheers, and robots is far more genuine.

We were a bit stressed too, having to put last-minute fixes on the robot to make it work at all in competition. The high-schoolers were involved a lot in the pits. I was proud of how we did, and I think we treated everybody on the team well. I was pretty badly sick at the time, but even so, was getting a good vibe from the team.

Do mentors go too far? I think they can... It's hard for students to get a good mechanical engineering experience when somebody else is doing all the engineering for them, or they have a professional lab building everything and solving the problems. You need to at least meet often enough to discuss problems with the students. If you're professional and you think there is a problem with their designs, you need to discuss that with them and show them why, instead of smiling, nodding, and rejecting the idea behind their backs. I think you have to talk like grownups--to the point, getting work done--but like grownups with respect. If students are doing nothing, you need to look for somewhere they can help. If students have skills, you should use them. But the students can't be there all the time, so you shouldn't be ashamed if you do more work.