Student Initiative

[4throck]

Regular beatings. We beat them constantly.

But in all seriousness, the best way to foster student initiative is to have a completely student built/designed robot. If the kids see the seniors designing and building the robot, they know that it is within their reach to do the same. When new kids see other students knowing everything that they have to know about building a robot, they will see that with some experience, their ideas have equal weight with all other ideas.

Naturally, this fosters fosters a lot of initiative if done correctly. If the kids know the basics, and also know that it is within their ability to do what the team has done in the past, they will take the initiative. Did any of you know what you were doing as freshmen? Hell no, and neither did I. But gradually, we all worked our way up into the leadership of the team, and had a hand in making our robot.

Of course, the problem with this method is that your robot MAY not be as good as if the mentors did everything. Naturally, the students will make stupid mistakes that could have easily been gotten around, or make mistakes due to inexperience. Hopefully though, the new leadership knows enough to do well anyway. If not, remember that students still get a lot out of a robot that is a complete and utter failure. Trust me on this one.