Limits on Team Hours

[hg273]

Hi All,

Team 1540 takes pride in being a student-managed team and producing a 100% student-designed and built robot. Recently, our school enacted a policy regarding the amount of time that students could have for homework and extracurricular activities. For this last build season, the policy did not impact the robotics program, and certain team members (myself included), racked up huge amounts of hours to finish the robot in 6 weeks. The administration caught wind of it, and was slightly concerned that students were putting 2, 3, 400 hours into robotics over a 6 week period of time. We were recently presented with a proposal that would not let a student into the robotics lab if he/she broke 200 hours over the 6 week build season. Additionally, the lab would be open from 3-6:30 on any school night, and only until 10 on weekends. My friends and I are concerned about how this may affect our build for next season. While there are many things we can do to distribute the hours, distributing tasks, training more new members etc. there are certain things that require some key members to put in large amounts of time.

I was wondering if other teams have statistics about the average and median amount of hours committed by team members over the build season. Anecdotes would work too. What I'm looking for are things that I, and my team, can take to our administration to see if we can amend the policy before it goes into effect for next year's build season. Also, if anyone has any past experience with situations similar to this, anything would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

[thefro526]

I hate when schools implement policies like this.

Regardless, in 2008 and 2009 I'd say I logged about 250hrs - 300hrs at school for build season. That doesn't include time I spent working on robotics related things at home or at work.

The only time limit we've ever had on our team was a shift limit. Most normal students are limited to (3) 2.5hr shifts per week during build.

[ttldomination]

This is the first I've heard of this, and I have to say, frankly, it's stupid.

My team logs in roughly 200 hours, with a few core logging in more hours in extra meetings and stuff outside of meetings.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by ttldomination

This is the first I've heard of this, and I have to say, frankly, it's stupid.

My team logs in roughly 200 hours, with a few core logging in more hours in extra meetings and stuff outside of meetings.

No, it is not stupid. It is an attempt to solve a real problem that students face. Instead of calling the administration stupid work with them to set realistic bounds.

[Tom Line]

I disagree there needs to be bounds set at all.

If the students other activites are not suffering, why would we limit their potential?

That's the policy we take. They know that school comes first. The more responsible students don't need to be told that. The other ones get a very stern counciling session should their grades slip at all.

How do kids develop personal responsibility if we shield them from making any bad decisions? Many people learn more from mistakes than they do from being told.

I see this as a step toward nannyism that the school shouldn't be taking. Where are their parents? The mentors? It's not a school's responsibility to manage these kids outside of school.

In fact, if no one on your team had their grades slip substantially, then I would argue that this is an answer that is in search of a problem.

[ATannahill]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

No, it is not stupid. It is an attempt to solve a real problem that students face. Instead of calling the administration stupid work with them to set realistic bounds.

Problem? I saw nothing in the first post that said that student performance dropped. I see no reason to fix something that isn't broken. If you try to, well, stupid is an accurate word. If there was a problem with students sleeping in class, skipping class, getting worse grades (even if they are not bad) than the policy has some meat on its bones.

[ratdude747]

does your school do grade checks? our school does and any robotics sudent earing less than a C in any class gets banned from excued ansences for trips, and less than a D gets you barred from meetings until the grades are up.

that way, if you are spending too much time on robotics not doing HW, you get a lame grade and get barred. trust me, it is a good incentive.

maybe you could try our system?

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by rtfgnow

Problem? I saw nothing in the first post that said that student performance dropped. I see no reason to fix something that isn't broken. If you try to, well, stupid is an accurate word. If there was a problem with students sleeping in class, skipping class, getting worse grades (even if they are not bad) than the policy has some meat on its bones.

For the team it may not be a problem but this policy is across the board and it IS a problem for many high schoolers. Now, perhaps the team may get an exception made but calling the policy stupid is a good way of pissing off the people you need to help you.

[Edoc'sil]

I put about 240 hours at school, and about another 50 outside of school. I would say see if you can set the bar at 250, you can't really put in much more then that. Or if the do keep it lower be a little creative (or subtractive) when i comes to logging in your hours where ever they are recorded. It is easier to agree with an idiot and do what you want behind his back, then it is to explain to him why he is an idiot.

[ttldomination]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

For the team it may not be a problem but this policy is across the board and it IS a problem for many high schoolers. Now, perhaps the team may get an exception made but calling the policy stupid is a good way of pissing off the people you need to help you.

Alrighty, the policy is not stupid, the implementation is stupid.

I mean, like almost everyone in the thread, if the students can maintain their performance in classes, why penalize them at all?

In robotics, we have a rule that if your grade drops below a 75, which is a D, then you can't attend after school meetings. It's logical. But putting a cap on the involvement of some of the students on the team who are doing everything right is wrong.

[EricVanWyk]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

does your school do grade checks? our school does and any robotics sudent earing less than a C in any class gets banned from excued ansences for trips, and less than a D gets you barred from meetings until the grades are up.

that way, if you are spending too much time on robotics not doing HW, you get a lame grade and get barred. trust me, it is a good incentive.

maybe you could try our system?

My mother is a high school chemistry teacher, and mentors a team. If a teacher tells her that a student is being delinquent, they have to rectify the situation before they can work on the robot. I've even seen her force a student to finish late homework during a build session and turn it in to her before they can go work on the robot. I think it is effective largely because my mom can embarrass anyone. ((<3 Mom))

I think this type of restriction is much more effective than a time limit. I think working on the robot can be a very tasty carrot, and being kicked out after a number of hours can be an arbitrary stick.

[EricH]

I easily spent 200+ hours in the shop during build when I was a student; I'd have to see if any of my time logs are still around my house for an exactish number. Others spent more time.

Now, where the administration is coming from: They have a policy that limits time on extracurriculars. You guys are exceptions for now. Policies don't like exceptions as a general rule. So, they're working on limiting the exception. They're probably also a little concerned about health, grades, etc.

There is also a valid reason to limit time in the shop: You need time for family, homework, sleep, etc., regardless of whether you think you do or not. My college recently implemented a policy on their engineering teams: Nobody in the lab between 2AM and 7:30AM, or something like that. This was to keep us all sane. Could it be bent? Yes, near competition. But only if you were doing well in school, health, etc., and weren't doing it regularly. Teams are actually more relaxed now, and doing better work.

What I would suggest is offer a counter-proposal: Lab open 3-7 on school nights (6:30 is good, but see if you can get an extra half-hour to clean up), open to 10 on weekends, don't restrict student time yet (emphasis on yet, because we'd like to get a fairer estimate of time). Track every student's time in the lab for this year. Time off-site designing and programming and such like doesn't count, but it would be a good idea to monitor that also. At the end of the next build cycle, total up the hours and come up with an average and a grand total. Round up to the nearest 25 for ease of tracking, and set that as the base limit. Do not count time working on homework in the lab--homework is important and not robotics stuff. (And if a student is being unproductive, i.e. messing around, count that time not at all.)

Request variances at the start of the school year based on how many students are reported on the team; that is, we know it takes about this many man-hours to complete a robot, we have this many students available, therefore, this is how many hours a given student can be expected to put in. Repeat the time-gathering every year to get better data; for example, a one year you might build a kitbot and the next year you might build unobtainabot that takes 10x as many hours to build, and a straight time-log won't show that.

Also, propose exceptions/extensions that can be applied for: if a lot of help is needed to finish on time, the team should be able to request extra open time, not to go beyond midnight on any given night, for up to two weeks in February. Students should be able to request up to two individual 50-hour extensions towards any time limit provided that they are in good standing. This is to help the robot do well at competition, and thereby show the school favorably. (Robot not do so well at competition, school/sponsors might not look quite so great.)

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by ttldomination

I mean, like almost everyone in the thread, if the students can maintain their performance in classes, why penalize them at all?

Not that I agree with the implementation of a hard limit, but it worries me that all the posters in this thread think the only two things to be juggled are robotics and school. Every teenager should strive to have a well balanced lifestyle that has time for socializing, exercise, school and a variety of extracurricular activities. There are far too many students in FIRST who only focus school and robotics, and for lack of a better characterization are socially deficient.

I'm not saying a hard cap on robotics hours is the answer (at least half of the 1114 students would blow past the 200 hours by week 4), but I think we need to remember that there's much more to a healthy lifestyle than just FIRST and school.

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by hg273

I was wondering if other teams have statistics about the average and median amount of hours committed by team members over the build season. Anecdotes would work too. What I'm looking for are things that I, and my team, can take to our administration to see if we can amend the policy before it goes into effect for next year's build season. Also, if anyone has any past experience with situations similar to this, anything would be greatly appreciated.

This probably isn't what you want to hear, but:

I think it all depends on what you want to do. In 2008 we built a robot that could probably compete with the Space Shuttle for most complicated system ever built. [video] I spent about 170ish hours at the school... and I was only around for 3 weeks of build! The core students and mentors (12ish) also averaged 40+ hours. Our two lead mentors were somewhere north of that. In short, we built a totally sweet robot, but we totally burned out our team.

In 2009, we only met 3 times a week for 4 hours for the first 3 weeks, 4 times a week for weeks 4-5, and daily during week 6. We put in significantly fewer hours, yet we were *more* competitive than we were in 2008!

Limits are not bad things, after all "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion."

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

I disagree there needs to be bounds set at all.

If the students other activites are not suffering, why would we limit their potential?

That's the policy we take. They know that school comes first. The more responsible students don't need to be told that. The other ones get a very stern counciling session should their grades slip at all.

How do kids develop personal responsibility if we shield them from making any bad decisions? Many people learn more from mistakes than they do from being told.

I see this as a step toward nannyism that the school shouldn't be taking. Where are their parents? The mentors? It's not a school's responsibility to manage these kids outside of school.

In fact, if no one on your team had their grades slip substantially, then I would argue that this is an answer that is in search of a problem.

Agreed, our #1 student in terms of hours (and I mean just some KILLER hours), is also our student with the highest GPA. He got a B once, in AP Euro, but for a technical kid that aint bad.