Largest team?

[Jon Stratis]

"Also what do you guys thing the highest number of students a team should have and why?"

A team's size should be dependent on two things: student interest and student engagement.

First, student interest: Only students who are interested and want to gain something from the program should be there. There's no sense in "forcing" people to join just to have a bigger team, if those people aren't interested enough to be active participants.

Second, student engagement: You want to make sure all members of the team are engaged and have something to do. If you can only fit 20 people in your workspace, it doesn't make sense to have 50 people show up and 30 of them sit in the hall. I'm a firm believer, however, that there is enough to do with FIRST and on a team that the team would have to be ridiculously huge before you run out of things to do. Community engagement, fund raising, PR, etc are aspects that are often neglected by smaller teams, so their time can be spent building a robot to work.

There is one very important thing to remember in all of this: The larger the team, the more planning needs to be done to ensure everyone is engaged and active. Very large teams may not all meet at the same time or location every time - they may have groups that meet on different nights to complete specific tasks, or those involved with building the robot may be in a different physical location than those working on PR and fund raising.

[Bjenks548]

Originally Posted by eagle33199

A team's size should be dependent on two things: student interest and student engagement.

I completely agree, I'm only asking because we have around 80 kids interested in being on the team (this includes returning and new members). As far as space goes, we have enough room to hold that many kids, I'm just wondering if there's enough for 80 kids on an FRC team to do. We fully intend to do things such as fund raising and community outreach, but still that's a lot of students.

[rmyoung]

Originally Posted by eagle33199

"Also what do you guys thing the highest number of students a team should have and why?"

A team's size should be dependent on two things: student interest and student engagement.
......

There is one very important thing to remember in all of this: The larger the team, the more planning needs to be done to ensure everyone is engaged and active. Very large teams may not all meet at the same time or location every time - they may have groups that meet on different nights to complete specific tasks, or those involved with building the robot may be in a different physical location than those working on PR and fund raising.

I also agree. I started with about 15 and the core was the five original students. Now (fifth year) I get 50 or so who show an interest, and 30-40 who make it through the season. But the core is still smaller - about 15. To manage everyone else takes more planning, better organize team leadership and mentors, and breaking out smaller groups at times. But they still have to feel like a team. That means doing some things together, and making sure everyone gets engaged.

Splitting out an FTC or VEX team seems like a good idea, but requires mentoring as well, and again more organization.

Rose Y
Team 2199, Liberty Robo-Lions
Eldersburg, MD

[Kims Robot]

I think the highest number of students has to have some sort of relation to the number of mentors. No matter how many tasks you have, it still takes a certain number of mentors to help students in order to get things done.

To a certain extent a 4 or 5 to one ratio of students to consistent mentors is probably reasonably ideal. The reason I throw the word consistent in there is because every team has those mentors that are only able to make it a day a week or here & there. It is very difficult to manage and help more than 4 or 5 students at a time, especially if they are doing different tasks.

As an example 1511 has ~25 mentors (I know - lucky!), but I would say come build season really only 10 to 15 of those are "consistent" And with the team working 5-6 days a week, that means the team probably should have a high of 50-75 students. Their highest has been somewhere around 45, so they can still support more, especially in the areas outside the robot.

However, it can be a tough balance. This year they have 18 students that joined the programming subteam!! If all 18 decide they want to do programming in build season, its going to be more than difficult to manage, especially since the only have 2-3 mentors.

I personally would love to see 1511 hit a sustainable 60ish students, but so far, while they usually start with a list that long, between grades and lower interest, its usually down to 40ish by the time build season comes.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

111 in a typical year will begin with 65, have a few drop out in the fall so that just over 60 are in attendance at kickoff. Everyone attends the Midwest Regional, a small group travels for our second regional and about 35 make it Champs. We have many mentors so there is usually about 2 or 3 students to one mentor. This year we are starting with 85 students and we are worried as to the logistics of handling the large group. All students have the opportunity to work on one or more of the sub teams...
Mechanical
Electrical
Software
Playing field
Strategy
Scouting
Animation
Video
Fund-raising
Chairman's and Hall of Fame
Inventor Documentation
Public Relations
Yearbook and DVD
Some of the subteams go unfilled from year to year as student interest changes.