Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?

[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.

[TimCraig]

I mentor a FIRST team because I think building the robots is fascintating, I have time to do it, and I think it's never too late to have a happy childhood.

FIRST teams vary all over the map. The high school where my team is has eliminated all vocational programs. Although we're in the heart of Silicon Valley, most of the students in the club don't seem really passionate about technology. If it wasn't for my efforts, I'm afraid a robot wouldn't get built for the competition in the last 3 years the team has been in existence.

I've thought about standing back and letting the team fail to deliver a robot much less a competitive robot. It's hard to separate the student's failure from mine in this instance. When I work on something, I expect excellance. When the robot is finished, it's handed over to the students for competition and I have no control over the outcome of the competition. I've told my students the one thing I can control is the "ooh and ahh" factor when people look at our robot. I take pride in what we build no matter how it finishes in the competition.

If the students in the club learn something from being around me and how I proceed at robot building, then I'm happy but that is largely up to them. I'm not a teacher. I'm not paid to spoon feed them or keep them entertained. I'm a mentor. I'm there to show them how the real world approaches problems, attacks them, and solves them.

The first year I was involved with FIRST I tried to stand back and wait for a "student designed and built" robot with me acting as a consultant. Three weeks into the build, there was absolutely nothing to show for the effort and we were lucky that Stack Attack was a relatively simple game so we managed to field a robot that by virtue of being reliable, was competitive. The team who had sponsored us as our mentor didn't really provide much support.

FIRST teams are organizations that have great turnover. The longest a student will be on the team is 4 years. Continuity is big factor of the mentors being available to carry the knowledge forward. Ideally, this knowledge would be passed from experienced students to less experienced students. While some of that happens on my team, it's not how I see the major knowledge transfer.

PS. If any of my students read this, please tell me. While I've pushed that Chief Delphi is a valuable site, I suspect that none of you visit here regularly if at all.

[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.

[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).

[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.

[Joe Lambie]

You know Andy; I am still amazed by the things that come out of your brain. This one has got me stumped.

For a number of years, and to a large extent still I am very much in the boat of wanting the students to do the majority of the design and manufacture work. Mentors I believe should be providing expertise and guidance (along with travel arrangements, money management and so on). From having the experiences I had in FIRST, I personally got so much more out of “doing” things then I would ever have gotten by just watching and listening. However, it was also a great opportunity to work alongside and with engineers, and learn from their years of experience. Often this was a great asset to our team, with young, creative, and crazy-minded students providing a fresh look at how things can be done along with the voice of experience in our engineering mentors letting us know when perhaps we were just a little too crazy.

Now this is not to say that teams in which students provide less engineering and manufacture work are not as inspired. In fact, some may be inspired to ask why an engineer chooses to design and manufacture a half-inch shaft over a 3/8ths shaft, while another may be inspired to learn how to manufacture it. They did not need to be in the shop or design room to be inspired, but merely see how exciting the world of engineering and science can be, and then have the drive and initiative to go out and find the answers as well.

Who knows, maybe someday Student A from Team XX, which was student run, may work in the same company as Student B from Team XXX whose team was mostly engineer run. Both these people have very different experiences in engineering, Student A may have an insight into the manufacture of parts and a sense of what can be done to simplify the creation of parts and therefore lower cost, while Student B may have an incredible sense of design and a fantastic handle on the fundamentals of machine design. By putting the two together, you have twice as much brainpower and expertise at work on a real world problem, both able to point out specific concerns from both sides of the engineering world of design and manufacture. As a result, you could get a better design, that is simpler to make, and safer to operate, while saving money. What more could any company ask for?

Ultimately every human is different, thankfully. If we were not all different I imagine we could be sitting and staring at the wheel sitting next to the fire in awe of how great the two are. Instead, we have traveled to the moon, and someday we will travel to Mars and beyond.

I propose a different view of the issue at hand. It is not so much of how the team is run, be it by students or engineers or a combination there of, but how each student learns and is inspired. Ultimately the students are the drivers behind this competition, for without them Dean and Woody would have a great idea, but not a whole lot of progress. The students need to ask questions if they are inspired by something they see, and the mentors need to be sure to answer them to the best of their ability. Remember though, it’s always fun to get your hands dirty once in awhile too.

[Carol]

Originally Posted by Ryan F.

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.
[/u]

I think it's very easy to misunderstand what is happening when you walk past a pit and "see" incidents like the above. Let me propose a theoretical scenario. Your students have participated in the design and building of your robot all year, working along side of and learning from the mentors. Now your team is at the Championship, and something breaks on your robot in your last match. Your next match is in 1 hour. It would take 2 hours for the students to fix it and 30 minutes for the engineers to fix it. Your best student mechanic is also the driver, and is meeting with the operating team to determine strategy for your next match. Who should fix your robot?

[KenWittlief]

Originally Posted by phrontist

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.

...

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.

FIRST has grown from an initial 32 teams to over a thousand, has thrived for over a decade, and you are telling us the person who founded this program, and put his life-force behind it for all these years got it wrong?

Seriously?

If FIRST was primarilly a robot building contest, then the major funding for it would evaporate overnight. Turn FIRST into battlebots, where winning is the thing, then what is the point?

I could not possibly care less which high school or which company can build the best robot in the US, or in the world. I do care about my profession: engineering. I do want to see more students take up the challenge of completing an engineering degree and helping to do what the rest of my profession does: making peoples lives better.

If a team has to win to be successful, then at the end of each year you will have 3 successful teams and 997 losers.

[KenWittlief]

Originally Posted by Carol

I think it's very easy to misunderstand what is happening when you walk past a pit and "see" incidents like the above.

I would also add, on our team we joked around alot. Whenever a student made a mistake we would look them in the eyes and say "YOUR FIRED"

and they would do the same to us - it was a game to lighten the air when someone screwed up - and the joke was: none of us were getting paid anyway.

Usually when you see mentors totally dominating the students, and even (actually) yelling at them, its their first year, and they dont 'get it' yet.