How involved are your mentors?

[Tom Bottiglieri]

Originally Posted by Edoc'sil

I cannot begin to explain how much mentors building the bot disgusts me. This competition is about the students, not about the robots. The amount of knowledge that is imparted by students building and designing the robot is immense, and every time that a mentor helps with the bot is an opportunity to learn lost. I have talked to teams a regionals where they didn't even know how their robot worked, much less how to go about designing it. We have built our robot with hands off mentors for three years now, and I have learned the value of seeing the mentors as a extremely valuable resource, not just another team member.

I see the value of the 50/50 argument, but I believe that in reality it leans more towards 60/40, 70/30 in reality with the students doing less and less work with the mentors solving the problems when the kids get stuck on a problem.

If the students can't build a robot like this I have little respect for your team. I admire the hard work and long hours many teams put into their robots, and when I compare student built robots to mentor built ones I find mentor bots to be extremely lacking, despite their fluid design and effectiveness.

Well I've be rude, watch the flame wars begin.

I have been a student on a team where the engineers built the robot behind closed doors, and the students saw it 6 weeks later.

I have been on a team where the students did 100% of the work.

I have been on a team where students work with college mentors.

And, I have been on a team where students work together with mentors, and put out a pretty decent robot because of it.

In my opinion, the last option is far and away the best. Not to sound like a broken record, but if you don't think so please take the time to stop by the pits of teams like 148, 217, 45, 1114, 254, 118, 111, 71, and 78. All of these teams run on similar mentor/student engagement models, and churn out some of the best students AND robots every year. They have to be doing something right.