Training for the upcoming underclassmen?

[Simon Strauss]

This year we unfortunately had no successful projects for training the 60 some odd freshmen who came to our first few meetings with interest and thus were left with only one actualy comming halfway through build. However, My freshmen year the team captain had the other motivated freshmen and myself observe and take part in the scraping of a previous years robot. I know it may sound like a horribly disrespectful move to some of you but it was very helpful in orienting us with tools, parts and where things went in the shop without the overwhelming aspect of being told to build something when you have no previous knowledge. It also allowed the returning members to reorient themselves through teaching us as well as functioning as a bonding type experience in that work was being done but because it hardly mattered and there was no deadline everyone was on their best humor and no one turned into a jerk while trying to take the lead.
Next season we plan on taking a similar approach but instead towards repairing the scraped 2005 robot and some side concept projects with extra emphasis on the time and effort requirements that being a member initials in the first few meetings. We hope that through this we can sift out those students who want to join for credit and thus properly train those that actually want to have fun building robots.