When do mentors go too far?

[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.