Largest team?

[Norman J]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

It can be even thought of as a
People vs Work done chart.
It would be a parabola, you need to find the balance

I don't think it's a parabola, that would yield negative work being done at high numbers of people involved. Are you implying that telling too many people to build a robot end in them disassembling what's already been built?

What I imagine it is is more like a Poisson distribution.

[Mr_I]

As with (probably) all other teams, in our 9 year history we have always had the balance of the "truly interested" vs. the "hangers on".

Our early years had enrollments in the 40's, with probably less than 30 who were actually consistent participants. Lately we've had rosters in the 30's, including a few "hangers on", with relatively good results. THIS year we only have 2 seniors (), and a larger than usual recruitment, so next year we might be pushing records for 811! Which, if we play it right, might not be a bad thing: The last few years we've always run out of bodies long before we ran out of tasks, and as a result we tended to ship robots with less features or abilities than we desired.

The biggest concern with larger numbers is, of course, how to accentuate the "truly interested" while minimizing the "hangers on". The solution is mentors: They have to keep things moving, develop and maintain a schedule, and keep people busy (and not just with "busy work").


So here's a new line of debate: What's the ideal team size, in students? Using our structure as a guide:

• Mechanical: 5-10 (based on student abilities and robot capabilities)
• Electrical: 3-4
• Software: 2-6 (based on autonomous capabilities)
• Strategy: 3-4
• Drive team: 3-6 (one or two drive teams)
• Marketing: 2-4
• 3D Animation: 2-4

So ideally 811 could function with between 20 and 40 students. (Hey, looks like we've been doing it right all along! )

[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.

[Ethangabbay]

We generally have a team around with 100 student.
Our team that travels to away competitions is only about 25 however.

We also have about 3 mentors that can come regularly.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by Ethangabbay

We generally have a team around with 100 student.
Our team that travels to away competitions is only about 25 however.

We also have about 3 mentors that can come regularly.

Really, 100 students and 3 mentors? Kudos to those three. I had a nightmare like that once...

[thelittlesister]

Team 316 seems to be having the opposite issue. We have 9 students and we've always had a small team, but next year half of our team will be graduating. We have been through many recruiting efforts with slim to no results. We're a county team so we've been to all the schools around, and through my CD research we've really tried to do most of the recruiting ideas. Any ideas? How do these other teams get so big?!
-Ally

[JesseK]

1885 is an IT school with some parents banging on doors as soon as their child becomes a freshman (heh). Historically ...

15 web students
5 programming students
2 electronics students
6 drive train students
10 manipulator students
7 "build 2" students (usually from FTC or FVC)
2 grant writing students
10 essay writers / pit & image designers
30-40 FTC students
20 student FLL mentors, about half of which also do FTC/FRC

So in a given year we pass about 100 individuals through our program. We had about 75 of them show up at the DC regional on Saturday this passed year. Typically we'll have 30-50 show up on major days for build, with about 10-20 core students who want to be there no matter what even if they're writing an essay (5am on a snow day anyone?).

[Siri]

Originally Posted by thelittlesister

Team 316 seems to be having the opposite issue. We have 9 students and we've always had a small team, but next year half of our team will be graduating. We have been through many recruiting efforts with slim to no results. We're a county team so we've been to all the schools around, and through my CD research we've really tried to do most of the recruiting ideas. Any ideas? How do these other teams get so big?!
-Ally

We had this problem back in Lunacy, graduating 3 of the 6-7 regular students. This year we've got over 30 on the roster. We're still just starting on the increasing size trend (well, we're certainly aiming for a trend), but a lot of them came from in-school/back-to-school night presentations.

Another huge thing--that took me a season of staring at MOE's cheering section to figure out--is the funneling from FLL and VEX. It takes some lead time, but our VEX league has over 100 kids in it now, and FLL is having to turn them away in droves. For some reason, it's seems easier to "catch them young". (But be careful, some of us'll never leave!)

[thelittlesister]

Originally Posted by Siri

We had this problem back in Lunacy, graduating 3 of the 6-7 regular students. This year we've got over 30 on the roster. We're still just starting on the increasing size trend (well, we're certainly aiming for a trend), but a lot of them came from in-school/back-to-school night presentations.

Another huge thing--that took me a season of staring at MOE's cheering section to figure out--is the funneling from FLL and VEX. It takes some lead time, but our VEX league has over 100 kids in it now, and FLL is having to turn them away in droves. For some reason, it's seems easier to "catch them young". (But be careful, some of us'll never leave!)

We have started 2 FLL teams this year and we do all the local back-to-school nights, but lets hope that the FLL teams will bring us luck! Thanks!
-Ally

[Dancin103]

Originally Posted by DUCKIE

I don't know about the largest team, maybe 103 The Cybersonics. I seem to recall a time ('01 or '02) where one of their pit ambassadors told me their whole school was on the team. Don't know if they all did much with the robot, but that's just what I vaguely remember.

Thanks but, the most kids 103 has ever seen is 45. We try to keep the number now around 30 to 35 because that is what works for the team. We have a small school, around 700 to 800 kids. In all honesty, I don't have a clue as to what we would do with over 50 kids. Some teams make it work, but small is what works for us. Also, 2001 to 2002 was when we had the largest amount of kids, you got the year right! I will have to find that ambassador and let him know it's not the whole school. (We do have a few robotics courses that the team started that kids can take that aren't in the school, maybe that's where the confusion began.)

From what I can remember and the events I've been too in my last 15 years, 365, 75, and 180 have had a lot of members on their team. Those are the three that seem to stand out the most.

Cass

[musicgurl1329]

Just an update... Team 75 now has 81 students.....

Way to many in my opinion.

[KyleLT1987]

Team 1647, founded back in 2005, started with 14 students (myself beign one of the original 14). Since then, the team has expanded to include all 4 schools within our district, thus creating a new team in the process 2729. Team 1647 currently has over 90 active students and 2729 is hovering in the same range as well I believe.

Going from 14 to 170+ in 6 seasons aint too shabby

[MarcD79]

Our team runs around 30-35 students. Of course not every student knows how to use the cad program to design a robot, nor do they want to. We have design team, drive team, graphics team, PR, Spirit & Book-keeping. Each team has a person in charge. We have weekly meetings & discuss what we want to accomplish for the upcoming season. We have fund-raisers where everybody can participate, plus patron drives to offset the teams/individuals costs to each event we travel to. I have seen a lot of teams bring a significant amount of students to participate in "Spirit" . I guess it's all up to how many students are interested in joining the team.