Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?

[Andy Grady]

I think the answer to the question at hand is pretty cut and dry. Every student is inspired in different ways. In my opinion, as long as the competition gets the attention of someone and drags them in, it doesn't matter how they get there.

I've been fortunate enough to have been on multiple teams, each of which was run in a different manner. One team was highly student run, another was run mainly by engineers and teachers, and the last one had a good mix of both. My finding...the majority of students who walked away from the experience on any of the teams felt inspired in some way.

When I was a student in high school, I fell in love with the competition aspect of the game. My team at the time was a very competitive team and they focused heavily on the strategic aspect of FIRST. From that year forward I was hooked, always bringing my hunger for strategy and competition with me. When I changed teams as I became a mentor, we weren't quite as competitive as my previous team, but the results were the same. Everyone enjoyed themselves, this time because of the closeness that the design and build period brought between the students and the college mentors.

With FIRST...if the student cares, its a win win situation. As soon as you are caught up in the atmosphere, the drama, and the glory of it all...you are hooked, and thats pretty much it. Even those who dont stick around for 10+ years tend to look back on their experience as a life altering event. Thats what makes the program as a whole so important.

In closing, why search for the means when the end is more than adequate no matter what you do. The purpose of FIRST is served by just showing up.

-Andy Grady

[phrontist]

I will admit I don't have an answer. But something seems very wrong to me when I walk into a pit and ask a student about part X only to hear that the brilliant part X was designed by a professional engineer. He/She's a professional, what pride could they possibly get from trouncing a bunch of student designed robots? It's like Michael Jordan going down to the YMCA for a pickup game, joining a team, and totally dominating the other teams. How the hell would that help the kids on his team? Is it okay for Michael Jordan to go down to the Y and help kids work on their jump shots? Sure! Is it okay for a professional engineer to teach kids about practical design considerations in designing a gearbox? Of course! I think you see where I'm going with this.

To keep with the sports star analogy: Imagine if a bunch of star basketball players each adopted a team of aspiring young athletes. Then they held a big competition. I'm sure it would be inspiring to play with a sports star, but you wouldn't be doing much, would you? It would just be mentor on mentor.

What a lot of people fail to realize is that a lot of schools have a lot of inspired students already, students who walk in the first day and have known for a long time they want to be engineers/physicists/mathematicans/etc. For schools like that, maybe the Recognition is of greater importance. Other students can certainly be inspired by the nerdy ones, no?

My team currently has no engineering mentors, but I'm actively changing that. One of the FIRST things I'll do though is make clear that we are not looking for an engineer to design are robot for us so we can gaze over his/her shoulder in silent awe, then do menial tasks at there direction. I'm not sure how an engineer does fit into our team yet, by I'm sure will figure it out.

I aplogize, this is not my usual writing style, it's much more off the cuff than usual, as this is an issue which I harbor very strong opinions on.

You may now mod me down, thank you for reading.

Dean & Woodie talk about teams having mentors.

men·tor Pronunciation Key (mntôr, -tr)
n. 1. A wise and trusted counselor or teacher.

The best teachers I had all through school taught the material they were supposed to teach, not let us read through a book and let us figure it out on their own. They were there to answer questions and make sure everyone understood the material. They also tried to make it fun and interesting as much as possible (we all know Economics isn't the most interesting subject to learn).

I feel a FIRST mentor should be the same way. They should teach the student their ways and their expertise and life skills (whether it is engineering or whatnot), show them that all aspects of a team should be fun, and should be interesting.

By taking away that aspect from a mentor on a team, they've become more of a secretary or a babysitter. I know that if I joined a team where my job as a "mentor" would be to clean up blood and kids cuts and just sit around and observe, I'd be pretty disappointed.

Sure, I can see how you would say each team is different, but as a mentor myself, I'd definitely would have a hard time accepting the fact that I wouldn't be able to help on a 100% student built machine.

Thats just my take on the matter.....

[AmyPrib]

I agree with the majority of people here already.... I feel a great way to achieve a well-run team is to have a good balance. The mentors must empower the students to design, build, lead, etc, and the students must be open to learning from the mentors, same as the mentors must be open to learning from students. It's a two-way street and I don't think you can logically argue that. There are some teams that have little to no mentors (or vice versa), but where there's a will, there's a way.. to recruit them... or recruit the help of other teams.

However, the key is defining.... what is inspiration... what is a mentor... what is an engineer... what is a teacher....what is winning...what is good performance....what is an award....what are your goals....what is FIRST about.... Everyone will have a variation to those definitions. So you are always going to have different opinions on what is the best way to run a team. The students will have one idea, the adults will have an idea... Hopefully those groups can come to an agreement. There must be give and take, but above all there must be learning on each side. Many times people have said "inspiration is letting the students do all the work and learn from their failures", while others have said "inspiration is leading by example, teaching students fundamental skills to carry thru the future". I think.. it's BOTH.

I honestly don't feel anyone can realistically say "a student-run team is better" or a "mentor-run team is better". If a student on a student-run team says "a student run team is best way", that implies they know everything (aka "we don't need mentors for anything, they cause more harm than good"). If a mentor says it about a mentor-run team, same implication, and I think that's ludicrous. The students have next to zero "professional" work or real-world experience, and I feel they need someone who does to be effective. But that's not to say adults know everything either - they learn from the creativity and "unconditioned" or "out of the box" ideas from students.

There are positive aspects to all 3 ways of running a team, but personally I feel there are only negative aspects in purely student-run, or mentor-run. (I'm not saying either are terrible, I'm saying there are some negatives to it and most of them are obvious)... The difficult part about a "well-balanced" team is: maintaining the balance between the sides.

So, that's what I think. If there are disagreements within the team about how to run it, then perhaps a team evaluation of your definitions of the above words is in order.

[Philip W.]

The bottomline is that we're fulfilling FIRST's ideals of inspiring youths to consider careers in science and technology and changing today's outlook in these fields. It doesn't matter if a robot is built and designed 100% by engineers and is the best on the field, or bulit and designed 100% by students and is the worst on the field, or even a combination of the two, as long as the students are inspired.

I've heard this one being reiterated in the FIRST community too many times now and I'm sure inspiration is happening in every FIRST team out there, but has anyone ever considered to take it a step further? I sure have. Instead of letting FIRST simply encourage youths to take on jobs of science and technology, why don't you make it a personal or team goal to produce the leaders of tomorrow? If not the leaders, at least the geniuses of tomorrow. Besides, FIRST isn't only about inspiration, FIRST is also about providing opportunities of enrichment. I'm the taking this opportunity, generously provided by FIRST (and my mentors and teammates, of course), to rise to the top.

Every team is unique, thus, the solution will always be dependant on the team.*sigh* I've heard this one too many times as well. Not that I'm trying to offend anyone, but this sort of thinking doesn't get us very far. What we need are details. "A good balance of...this-that-this" really isn't good enough either I'm afraid. To find a better answer, let us remind ourselves the question at hand.

Originally Posted by Andy Baker

Dare I ask... Which "team" is better? What defines "better"?

Keeping in mind that FIRST is out there for the kids, I will firmly say that the student run team is better. Let's be unrealistic for a second. The perfect team would definitely be student run, but will still have mentors supporting and acting as a security blanket in case the students make a big mistake, which they won't if they have earned the responsibility of managing a small business that we would usually call a FIRST robotics team. Mentors will have to be deprived of involvement, but in replacement of that fun is an abundant warm fuzzy feeling. Of course, for this team to be perfect, they would have to be a successful one in competition, therefore having bright and capable students not only in managing team, but also engineering a competitive robot. The perfect team will also be capable of winning every FRC award available and spread the word of FIRST as if it was the plague. Just perfect.

Now, to stop daydreaming. It'll be a while before the perfect team comes along (I won't shoot down the possibility), but the more your team is similar to this one, the closer you will be to achieving this dream.

Unfortunately, what we usually see today are excellent engineer-built robots or not-so-great student-built robots. Between these two types of robots (not considering the existence of excellent student-built robots), not-so-great student-built robots still make the "better" team for FIRST's sake. These are the students that will more likely the geniuses of tomorrow. But we have to remember that engineer-built teams are still good teams for inspiring the students.

Just because a robot is 100% student-built, doesn't mean mentors and engineers still can't help. We must remember that mentors should only be teaching. If mentors keep to teaching students the design process and how to use a machine and etc., and ensure the students are productive, all that is needed from the students is a creative mind and a willingness to work to have an excellent competitive robot.

I am not leaving out the fact that some teams cannot be easily student run or have a student built robot if the students aren't willing, that some students may be too independant to ask for mentor support, that mentors can't help but join the fun and other facts, I am simply directly answering the debate question.

[dubious elise]

Originally Posted by Andy Baker

In my mind, can a engineer design something on a robot and be proud of that design? You bet.

I could not agree more with that statement. In 2004, we got ourselves in to a bit of a jam trying to figure out how to hook onto the bar effectively and without taking up too much weight. A mentor that had just recently "joined forces" with our team took our problem and began brainstorming designs with a group of kids. In the end, we came out with a lengthy, strong, aluminum arm that helped us to win the Midwest Regional (of course, with the help of your team, Andy, and team 930!). That mentor was so proud of the creation that he has offered, on multiple occasions, to take the arm back if we ever (heaven forbid) scrap the robot so that he could hang it over his fireplace like a prizewinning muskie.

Of course, mentors are necessary to help a team function. I could not imagine having students doing everything from booking hotels to packing meals to welding the frames perfectly square to wiring the robot perfectly the very first time. As much as I hate to admit it, FIRST just isn't that simple. And of course, as many have said, mentors are there to help, not to hoard.

Originally Posted by Arefin

When someone tells me the word "mentor" I think of someone who will be there to teach me, and then watch over my shoulder when I am building cool things. If it is not possible for me to design or machine a part, or code certain section, then the mentor take over and solve the problems. I have seen many teams work like that. The students love it, because they get the best out of the program.

To build on Arefin's quote, mentors can also be there learning alongside the students. Every year, just working on strategic puzzles to simplify each game helps tremendously. Mentors don't frequently have experience in this area, so students and adults are on a very level playing field. For this year's game, we made up red and blue cards to fit onto squares on a 3x3 board (like the field!) and we would have 20 second "matches" between mentors and students alike to see who could place the squares in the best patterns on the field. Even though our robot wasn't as fast at stacking as we had been about laying down cards, we learned some crucial strategy-oriented maneuvers that helped us to win a number of matches.

[Ryan Foley]

I think D.J. Fluck's spotlighted post sums this up well

"I don't understand why it should matter if your robot is 100% student built, 100% engineer built or somewhere in between. As long as you are Inspired (I word again) FIRST is getting its point and primary goal across."

I agree with this almost fully. If 100% student built gets the kids inspired, go with that, if 100% engineer built works well, do it. However, personal experiences lead me to prefer a mix of students and engineers.

My freshman year, the bot was completely built by the engineers. I personally didnt find this inspiring or fun, perhaps if they had let us watch what they were doing and they explained what was going on and why, it would have been a more positiv experience. Then, in 2004, it was 100% students. I thought it was the best set up, and that we were better than the other teams because we didnt need engineers.

Now, after taking a year off and watching, I wish that I had the oppurtunity to work with engineers in FIRST. I think that having the chance to work alongside engineers is an incredible oppurtunity that high school (and even college students) can learn a lot from. And I agree with Elise, the mentors can learn from the students. Remember Dave Lavery's story of Colin Angle and Tooth the robot at JPL/ NASA?

Also, to answer the title question of the thread, sometimes teams just can't get technical mentors to join them. Sometimes the more rural teams have no companies close enough to them that could provide engineering support. Or maybe the team is surrounded by companies, but none have the time or enough people to spare to devote to the robotics team. So it's not that all teams are voluntarily choosing not to have engineering assistance.

[nehalita]

I really love this thread because it reminds me how wonderful FIRST is. We see so many opinions here yet everyone seems to work according to their own needs. There is no "way" and we all get to bask in the ability to choose how to run our teams.

Alot of people mentioned here how some teams "do not realize" how involved a team could be. This could not be closer to true. I am living proof. When I started FIRST, I was astonished to see so many adults at the competition. I thought all teams, like ours, was student run, student built, etc. Thus, I had the image that this was the "only way to go." After mingling with other teams and through chiefdelphi, i've realized how many different teams and levels and interactions there are. I had NO idea!

This year would be our third year competing. Our team consists of probably 10 dedicated students and two VERY dedicated teachers. We don't even have a real "sponsor" -- alot of our money comes from relations that will give one time and move on (and the majority comes from us). But, we are desperately trying to change this. We are trying to find a sponsor, trying to get more students involved and trying to find an engineer to help us. After two years of trying, we haven't given up...maybe this year will be our lucky break.

What i'm trying to show here is that alot of teams don't have a choice. However, imagining that we had an engineer, I think it would help our spirit, competitive edge, and overall experience.

No doubt, we take pride in our self-reliability. When we run into problems, we sit and figure out what to do -- we engage in this process to its fullest extent without having someone on the end cut us short with the answer. But it's been hard. We had no machining tools (that should change this year) in the past and the majority of our robot was built with a drill, a hammer and saws. And given what we had, I feel take pride our progress.

Most of all, I want to point out that our two mentors, the teachers in my school that have taught me mathematics, engineering and CAD and that I see everyday (literally, except for sundays and holidays), have gotten us this far. No, we had no engineers but we had two dedicated mentors that were willing to put their heads together with us, treat us as equals, and engage in the "engineering process." We all are human, we all learn, we all interact. So why not promote the interaction? Every team needs a mentor to push them in some sort of way -- so, the more the merrier.

[Ryan F.]

I'll bite.

Originally Posted by Andy Baker

These teams get awards for their student involvement.

I was told by judges at the Midwest Regional that they were specifically told to not account for amount of student involvement in determining awards.

Originally Posted by Andy Baker

Are both teams learning? yes.

NO.

I realize there are no absolutes here, but what I have seen has appalled me. I've witnessed an engineer on a team with an obviously professionally designed robot yelling at one of his pit crew about how he was “stupid" for the way he was trying to fix something, then push him out of the way and do it himself. Witnessing things like this make me VERY thankful I am on a team with high student involvement.

When you see the pits of these teams at regionals, It seems like the kids are standing around when the engineers do all the work. People learn from doing something, not watching someone else do it.

Originally Posted by Andy Baker

We see teams who are proud about having a "100% designed and built robot". I can respect this. They worked hard. They learned much. However, more likely than not, they performed not so well at a regional.

They may have professional machine designers creating gearboxes or writing code.

Here’s the big problem. How are high schoolers supposed to compete against professionally designed and built robots? This is where the true conflict is. The teams who believe that FIRST is better when the students actually build and manage the robot get destroyed in competition. FIRST is not supposed to be a professional engineering competition. If the engineering mentors want that, there are other avenues. FIRST is meant to Inspire the STUDENTS. The more we allow for these professionally designed and built robots to dominate the FIRST competitions, the more it encourages student run teams to start letting the engineers design and build the robots. FIRST will start to discourage many teams from participating when they realize that the robot they spent six weeks on has no chance of success at the competition.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Andy Baker

Are both teams learning? yes.

Originally Posted by Ryan Forystek

NO.

How do you know? The answer is you don't.

Originally Posted by Ryan Forystek

I realize there are no absolutes here, but what I have seen has appalled me. I've witnessed an engineer on a team with an obviously professionally designed robot yelling at one of his pit crew about how he was “stupid" for the way he was trying to fix something, then push him out of the way and do it himself. Witnessing things like this make me VERY thankful I am on a team with high student involvement.

Why is it that if a robot looks good it's automatically made by only engineers? This is a common misconception, and if I were a student who had a hand in a professional design, I'd be insulted.

When you see the pits of these teams at regionals, It seems like the kids are standing around when the engineers do all the work. People learn from doing something, not watching someone else do it.

Originally Posted by Ryan ForystekHere’s the big problem. How are high schoolers supposed to compete against professionally designed and built robots? This is where the true conflict is. The teams who believe that FIRST is better when the students actually build and manage the robot get destroyed in competition. FIRST is not supposed to be a professional engineering competition. If the engineering mentors want that, there are other avenues. FIRST is meant to Inspire the STUDENTS. The more we allow for these professionally designed and built robots to dominate the FIRST competitions, the more it encourages student run teams to start letting the engineers design and build the robots. [U

FIRST will start to discourage many teams from participating when they realize that the robot they spent six weeks on has no chance of success at the competition. [/u]

FIRST isn't about the competition. Dean has said it isn't, and won't be fair. The competition is a means to an end. How can you possibly characterize what inspires a student by what inspires you? the answer, as I said before, is you can't.

Also, until you've worked with a team, or spent an extensive amount of time around them, do not make ignorant claims about how their team is ran. You have no idea what they have or haven't done, and you have no right to demean their work. It's not up to others to police mentor involvement on a team. It's up to the students. If they feel like they don't have enough involvement, THEY need to fix that, likewise if they feel that they have too much involvement, they need to get mentors into the game.

$0.02

[mechanicalbrain]

Originally Posted by Cory

Also, until you've worked with a team, or spent an extensive amount of time around them, do not make ignorant claims about how their team is ran. You have no idea what they have or haven't done, and you have no right to demean their work. It's not up to others to police mentor involvement on a team. It's up to the students. If they feel like they don't have enough involvement, THEY need to fix that, likewise if they feel that they have too much involvement, they need to get mentors into the game.

$0.02

Well thats a little more than two cents. Maybe he has and he's referring to personal experience as well or maybe he's talking about a friends personal experience. My major concern about this thread is watching it getting nippy replies which is why i went back and reposted my own original statement. Anyhew give him a chance maybe he has ground to stand on! Same goes to Ryan, it's fine to express an idea but do it in a way that others will give your message a chance. This needs to be a discussion of ideas and whether or not we agree with ideas we should still respect peoples right to have them and express them. How else can we change our own beliefs and evolve as engineers as well as people?

[KathieK]

My experience is with a team which has had a large number of mentors working with the students over the last several years. These mentors included engineers, teachers, college students and other adults from all kinds of vocational backgrounds. While nothing is perfect, and the team dynamics change from season to season, I like to think that exposing the students to working with adults other than teachers (whom they normally have contact with on a daily basis during the school year) is advantageous. Not all of the students are planning to become scientists or engineers so exposure to other professional skills is a good thing. Because the team had grown to larger numbers and had mentoring and other support, it allowed the team to expand to include additional things like community involvement, which in turn brings in more media attention, which in turn attracts more potential sponsors and spreads the word of FIRST. Adults have networked and have more connections than the average high school student simply because we're out in the workplace and we've met a lot of people. Managing the paperwork and scheduling the school board meetings for a team with students from multiple high schools is an administrative nightmare that most students don't want to deal with, but some adults may have the professional skills to do it efficiently (and are more than willing to explain it to the students, if any were ever interested in learning about it). I think an effective mentor is one who encourages student ideas, listens to them, then offers an opinion or guidance based on professional expertise.

[GeorgeTheEng]

There are 2 more things I would like to add to this topic. The first leads into the second.

At our school, there are no classes in programming of any kind. The closest they come is a web design class and html is nothing like C. That being said, it falls on me to teach the kids what they need to know. Last year we only go one 4 hour session to go over programming prior to the season. Not enough for the kids to understand it well enough. So did I do the actual programming, yes. But I tried to do it in such a way that they students were involved and understood something. As much as possible, I hooked my laptop up to a projector and worked on the code with the kids. Explaining the decision process and having them help determine how it was going to work. Is that "having the students do it" No, I admit that. My goal this year is to make another step in that direction. Did the students learn? I beleive so. The indiciated to me that they learned something. Sometimes what the mentor has to or doesn't have to do is a product of the environment and what kind of team they are on. (though the goal should always be to improve the students skills, thought processes, and experiences)

That being said, even though I am a professional programmer, I do not work on a daily basis with anything similar to stuff we do on the robot. I work on PC-based simulators that simulate the interfaces between military systems. I don't work with microprocessors directly, I don't have to deal with interrupts, setting pins, or worrying about memory space. To me, the whole robotics experience is a stretch and something new. So while a lot of us have degrees in engineering, I'd claim that the only real "professionals" are one who work with this type of stuff all the time. I think most of us would really be in the experienced amatuer category.

[Adrienne E.]

Originally Posted by GeorgeTheEng

Sometimes what the mentor has to or doesn't have to do is a product of the environment and what kind of team they are on. (though the goal should always be to improve the students skills, thought processes, and experiences)

This to me sums up my thoughts on this issue. A reoccurring debate on our team has always been, if there are no high school students interested in doing a task (wiring, programming, chairmans, animation, or anything on the team) then what? I think this is why some teams need mentors to step in and either create interest in a field such as programming where none of the students would get exposure to it otherwise, or just get things done. I guess I just don't see the harm in a mentor programming the robot if every single high school student on the team wants to do the mechanical things. I think (as many others have said here) the mentors are a key part of the FIRST program. The fact that high school students get to work side by side with real engineers is one of the things that makes this program special and different from all the other engineering competitions out there.

[phrontist]

Originally Posted by Ryan F.

The more we allow for these professionally designed and built robots to dominate the FIRST competitions, the more it encourages student run teams to start letting the engineers design and build the robots. FIRST will start to discourage many teams from participating when they realize that the robot they spent six weeks on has no chance of success at the competition.

I have to agree with Ryan. People are always clamoring "it's not about the competition", but frankly, for a huge number of students, and certainly to the public, it is most certainly about the competition. If we don't have a competition, we don't have any vehicle with which to inspire. If we don't have a fair competition, it will quickly degrade into a sham.

One of the more uncomfortable, and seemingly inevitable moments of explaining first to an outsider is the inevitable prompt, "Are all these robots student built?", to which I haven't found a good response. The honest answer would be no, but how do you justify the program in light of that?

Originally Posted by Cory

FIRST isn't about the competition. Dean has said it isn't, and won't be fair. The competition is a means to an end.

An unfair competition is no competition at all. The organization is larger than Dean, and if it is to survive, it must, like all organizations, change.

Originally Posted by Cory

Also, until you've worked with a team, or spent an extensive amount of time around them, do not make ignorant claims about how their team is ran. You have no idea what they have or haven't done, and you have no right to demean their work. It's not up to others to police mentor involvement on a team. It's up to the students. If they feel like they don't have enough involvement, THEY need to fix that, likewise if they feel that they have too much involvement, they need to get mentors into the game.

Ack! "How their team is run"! You are right, it is impracticle to police mentor involvement, but we can develop a culture in which it is completely unacceptable, and peer pressure will take over.

In FIRST, entirely Engineer built robots are an abomination. There is significant reason to be proud of the degree to which your robot is student designed (built is less important, I find, because real engineers may never pick up a spanner).