Percentage of Work Done by Students.

[JoeXIII'007]

Team 66's build components:

-100% Student and Mentor Design concept (50/50) It is a very good and educational blend

-Roughly 75% of the frame is student built. All the parts are cut, and screwed together by students, and partly done by mentors.

-Electrical, the team has not really had a student really interested in doing that in a long time, so that is a void the engineers fill. But, if a student wants to learn about it and do some of the hands on stuff, I am more than sure the mentors would be willing to make some room for them.

-Programming: I am one of the programmers on the team. What I basically get is updated programming stuff from the adult programmer, and I read it and try to make sense of it, and if I spot a possible problem, I tell them. The mentor on our team uses english a lot in his programming, so interpreting it is not very hard at all. Just an understanding of how C works is required. The result is that I have been given the capability to build programs if I ever wanted to. It doesn't have to be robotics related, I could do it right now due to how good the mentoring is.

-CAD: there are some conflicts here primarily with the school cirriculum, which uses Autocad and Inventor, and GM, which uses something call CADkey I think. However, from what I've seen the engineers do with the CAD there, I am 100% sure it can be done in AutoCAD and inventor, if not easier than in their software (no offense to GM by any means).

It all comes down to the FIRST program and student ambition. If the program is set up right where the resources are available to learn what students want to learn without screwing up the robot, 2 thumbs up. Same if the students want to build themselves. The learning experiences available are ~ equal. However, it is ultimately what the student makes of it that will slant their P.O.V.