Percentage of Work Done by Students.

[TimCraig]

Yada yada. Basically, this has been run into the ground on here. Even if everyone adhered to your approach of mentors playing rah-rah and the students doing "most" of the work, you still have the case of some schools having very heavily invested in vocational programs and have state of the art machine tools available with students capable of running them. Just listen to some in today's posts talking about CNC mills and laser cutters. My team has no such tools, in fact this high school has gutted their vocational programs and currently offers none, but they do have a capable engineer, if I do say so, helping them. So where do you draw the line?

[Bongle]

Originally Posted by TimCraig

Yada yada. Basically, this has been run into the ground on here. Even if everyone adhered to your approach of mentors playing rah-rah and the students doing "most" of the work, you still have the case of some schools having very heavily invested in vocational programs and have state of the art machine tools available with students capable of running them. Just listen to some in today's posts talking about CNC mills and laser cutters. My team has no such tools, in fact this high school has gutted their vocational programs and currently offers none, but they do have a capable engineer, if I do say so, helping them. So where do you draw the line?

I'd say you draw the line at the point that there is no student that could do what the engineer could doing. Maybe teach the student how to do <blah>, but then the engineer does <blah> for time or quality reasons. If the engineer simply says "and then I'm going to do this!" and the student really has no idea what he is going to do or why, then you haven't inspired anything. All you've got is a bunch of engineers building a robot with a couple HS students watching. I'm fine with engineers building stuff when time is tight or quality needs are paramount (and a learning student might screw it up a few times), but it they're doing stuff that students absolutely cannot do, it seems to defeat the purpose of learning things while building your robot. When I mentor programming, I try to make sure that the students do all the work unless we're on a close deadline to get a feature working. It's a high school competition, not a "hey engineers! find a bunch of high schoolers to enter for you so you and your coworkers can build a robot" competition.

At the very least, the students should be PRESENT when the robot is being worked on so they might pick something up. I've seen way too many teams where the students are off in the stands while their team of professional engineers fix/upgrade their robot in the pits.

[JVGazeley]

Every team takes a different line on this and ours is that the mentors want to have the students do as much of the robot as they can. Over the course of January 2006, I learnt how to use certain types of saw and how to weld, plus gained a lot of experience with files, despite the fact my role is actually as the scrutineer on the team.

The Mentors will guide us but they will want us to come up with the ideas, feed in their own on occassion for us to consider, and have us do as much of the build as we can, with them teaching us how to do things if we've never done them before. Students also do all the programming too.

I would hope other teams use a similar philosophy rather than have the mentors do all the work. I can personally say about parts of the robot; "I suggested that" or "I welded that" or "I cut that" as can a large part of the rest of our team.

As for tools, we use a mentors garage. You can see that on the FIRSTwiki as on the page for Eric there is a picture of the robot outside the garage, the door still open. We are not the most high-tech team by a long way, part of this years robot will prove that, but we Brits here at Systemetric do put in a good showing most years at NYC.

[Greg Perkins]

Was it just me or did you all think FIRST tried to narrow the playing field with the 5' height rule? I personally think that they did; this takes away any major leverage that teams (who have ambiguous resources) have with creating arms and whatnot. I like this idea, it gives each and every team the ability to compete fairly without one team being restricted as another is unrestricted. As for mentors/adults/enginners who build robots....I have no comment.

[aviv]

I think that engineers doing the work is wrong. You should do the work yourself. I have heard of teams that engineers built most of the robot for them, I seriously dought they gained as much as a team that built every thing by themselves

[Cuog]

It also depends upon the dynamics f the students on your team, if they can build the robot themselves with a little guidance from mentors then they should do that. If the team doesn't have amny students with mechanical and electrical know-how then it is better if the mentors get more involved in teaching the students what to do and what would be the best way to do it.

When it comes to the actually building of the robot i beleive that the mentors should take a "hands-off" approach as much as possible and allow the students to learn through experience, but if there are time/capability reasons then the mentor/engineer should take on the building task.

[Uberbots]

Well first ill start out by saying that we had 2 robots.
the first one was built 75% mentors, 25% students, but 90% student idea. THe robot stank when we took it to the scrimmage, as it was topheavy and had indigestion (the loaded balls never reached the shooter).

so our second robot was about 40% mentors and 60% students, but 100% student idea (at the time of shipping). The robot obviously performed alot better (after we had fixed a major shooter problem) and won us the regionals.

I think that the mantors are the ones who take the responsibilty in the pits because the robots have to be fixed fast in rder to be ready for the next match. If we had students fixing our bot, i dont beleive we would be ready for the next 2 matches. the mentors are there when effeiciency of build is needed, as far as design of the bot goes its the students job.

[Libby K]

hah. our team was 100% students.

we, as rookies, had problems with engineers and funding.

so we just did it all (as per my signature)

Its fairly and equally designed out and worked on by everyone on our team (meaning students and mentors). The students on my team do alot of work on it. Even from one year being on electrical subteam and mechanical subteam, i remember alot of the tools i learned and used (which is really good from me hehe), and still alot of the electrical based things. Its really good when students do alot of the majority of the work, but while getting alot of help by engineers or mentors. They learn something new every day that they work and put their effort into. Its really exciting.

-Court-

[thatphotochick]

all the work on the robot is about 90-95% done by students...some parts done more or less by the engineers. most of the engineers and mentors simply guide the students, and students have a say in everything. everything else..like animation, CAD, marketing, logistical work, even most programming..is done 100% by students, or at least close enough.

[geowasp]

while I also believe, like most of you, that students should be as independent as possible, and try to design and build, design, and program most of the robot ourselves, but there gets to a point in some seasons where the mentors have to step in and say "alright, it's a week to the ship date, and we need to do this, this , and this". They are there to make sure we don't screw up, and to make sure we have a feasible bot at the competition. It is all about the level of "guiding". Our bot is mostly built and assemblied by the students, but unfortunately, we are not experienced enough to independently write our own code and machine certain parts (can be partially attributed to the lack of facilities), but the mentors are there so that we will be able to do that somewhere down the road. I mean certain stumbling blocks are always gonna be there every season, and the mentors should let us, the students, attempt to solve it by ourselves; but if its a week from the ship date, and the robot is still 4 different half-working parts, there just isn't time for this sort of "learning process". I guess what i'm trying to say is-- at the end of each season, sometimes, just trying our very best to create the robot by ourselves (the students) is all that we can do.

[RebelWithARobot]

I know this is a touchy subject for many people but let me explain the way I see this.

1) No company is going to hire a student simply because they worked on a FIRST robot.
2) You can be inspired to be an Engineer without knowing how to build anything.

My point is that if a student is very interested in being an Engineer they will go to college to do so. They will learn what they need to know in college. I'm not going to argue that you can't learn as much from FIRST as you can from college, but company's don't care what FIRST team you're from, they care about your degree. FIRST his in place to show you what Engineers do, not to teach you how to be an Engineer.

Our Engineer is Richard Wallace, one of the smartest guys I know, and I would not for a second think that he could teach me everything he knows. Nor do I think it is his mission as a mentor to teach me everything he knows. But if he can inspire me by showing me what he does, what is career consists of. THAT is mentorship. You don't have to teach to inspire.


Just my opinion.

[Bongle]

Originally Posted by RebelWithARobot

1) No company is going to hire a student simply because they worked on a FIRST robot.
2) You can be inspired to be an Engineer without knowing how to build anything.

Being inspired to be an engineer without actually knowing what it involves (i.e. being inspired without actually knowing how to design or build anything) is pretty dangerous. Someone creative who might otherwise go into arts or the humanities might say "gee, that mentor of mine sure knows how to build a good robot, I want to go into engineering!" but be horribly disappointed when they realize engineering is calculus, math, and many other somewhat boring (to a creative/artistic person) things that they may not enjoy.

If you only understand the ends that someone achieves without understanding the means that got them there, you might get a very wrong impression of what they were doing and whether or not you'd like it. If someone doesn't like math but they like designing/working with robots, a career in marketing or sales might be a better choice than engineering. They'd still get to work with them and perhaps set specs for new robots, but they wouldn't need to deal with the nitty-gritty.

[indieFan]

Originally Posted by RebelWithARobot

1) No company is going to hire a student simply because they worked on a FIRST robot.

My point is that if a student is very interested in being an Engineer they will go to college to do so. They will learn what they need to know in college. I'm not going to argue that you can't learn as much from FIRST as you can from college, but company's don't care what FIRST team you're from, they care about your degree. FIRST his in place to show you what Engineers do, not to teach you how to be an Engineer.

On the contrary. I handed my resume to someone at a career fair and had listed my undergraduate research and my having mentored/coached two FIRST teams. He looked at the resume and said, "Oh, I see you have 5 years robotics experience." He then proceeded to write down "5 yrs" on the resume. I later received a phone call asking for an interview and got the job working with robots. He barely even touched on my undergrad research or my college during the interview. You never know what an employer is looking for until you're there.

Getting back to the thread at hand:

Yes, it is great when the students have the time and opportunity to do the majority of the building. However, many schools do not have the time and/or resources to do this. Many lessons can be learned, including how *not* to build a robot from watching the engineers/mentors. (Those of you that saw 1070 at AZ on the first couple of days will know what I'm talking about.)

In addition, the engineers/mentors actually get benefits from working on the robots. 1) They refresh their memory on the more basic engineering fundamentals. 2) They learn things outside their area of expertise. 3) They get hands-on experience which is absolutely invaluable. In order to be able to fix a process, you need to be able to see the mechanical issues at hand. In order to design an effective piece of equipment, you must understand how things are machined/manufactured. Don't see FIRST as only being for the students, see it as being for the present engineers/mentors, as well as the future generation.

indieFan

[pwilczynski]

FIRST as an organization makes it so that every choice the team makes is totally up to the team. Therefore, each team is different when it comes to placing control in the hands of the mentors. While a student might learn a lot with 100% student built robot, they would learn even more if they worked with a mentor on a robot. On my team, we use a kind of 'board of directors'- 3 students and 2 mentors who make final decisions on the robot. People from the team can voice their opinions to this group who then choose. Actual physical construction occurs with about 80% student:20% mentor. We seperate our team into different sub-groups, with one or two mentors per 5-7 students. They will tehn show the students how to create the parts if they don't know how, and in general just help them. While I agree that 100% mentor-robots are not the best, I also think that 100% student robots are not the best. Students need examples from the mentors in order to learn.