Student / Mentor, desgn/build Poll

[Alex Golec]

Well, if I had had my pick, I would've chosen option #3: Students and Mentors work in perfect harmony to design and build the robot together.

However, the case being the two real options, I feel that both are similar in terms of pros and cons, but in the end I selected option 2: student designed, mentor built.

Before I begin with my reasoning, I will acknowledge that I am biased toward designing, and have followed in the footsteps of our team's engineer/designer, Art Ostrowski - designing has become my passion on the team. (I believe that this little bias was most likely the ultimate factor in my pick.)

First off, given the options, the students can gain much from both of the options: design and construction. In design, the challenge comes from deriving a solution, and conceptualizing a system for it. However, the actual construction of the system requires skill as well, in terms of correctly fabricating the parts and executing the assembly process correctly. Both are challenging to the students, and mentors are there to help in the processes.

To me, a robot designed by mentors may have great capabilities, but its assembly might be a bit rickety, and less reliable. A student built robot on the other hand, lacks some of the potential of a mentor designed robot: while it is somewhat true that students may not have been conformed to the "standard box of engineering" and can think outside of this box, the mentors usually have seen more machines, robots, and other implements and have a wider database of concepts to build off of already.

Additionally, FIRST is about a learning process, and in my experience with the team, I have been challenged more and learned more from designing a system than I have from constructing one. Imaginations are stretched in order to find some solutions, and for others the solution is marvelously simple - but both put to use multiple skills in conceptualizing and simplification of crazy contraptions into realistic, constructible systems.

In contrast of my general view, construction requires some finesse as well, not in creation, but in implementation. The first part drawing I ever received to make for a FIRST robot was a strange oblong oval with a square hole in the middle- it puzzled me to the point where I just sat and stared at it until our machinist came over and explained the part to me. I didn't quite get it then, so I was moved on to simpler parts. The most amazing design can never be implemented unless someone knows how to build it.

These two options can both be used effectively to create a wonderful experience for the students, but limiting them to one area is like taking a globe, slicing it in half, and saying, "You can only explore this half."

Its a fair question, and a difficult one at that. Here are my two cents (2.4 cents Canadian, 1.7 euro cents), paid to CD challenging question fund.

_Alex