Training technical mentors

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by StevenB

Besides going to a competition, are there suggestions for a "crash course" that could get these smart but uninitiated folks up to speed?

There's no such thing as a crash course in Gracious Professionalism. You can't initiate someone without putting him or her in the middle of things.

Watch "Gearing Up", perhaps? It's better than nothing, and it might allow them to accelerate a bit more smoothly without running into quite so many walls along the way to useful speed.

[EricH]

I think the first thing to do is to find out what they do/don't know about practical electronics. A lot of stuff can be theoretical, but without some basic practical knowledge, theory doesn't necessarily translate into happy assembly/repair technicians. Then you deal with what they don't know, or need more practice in.

As far as the rabbit trails/illegal stuff area, start out by having them read a few sections of the rules. For example, maybe not the entire robot section, but anything to do with the electronics. Maybe not the arena section or the tournament section, but the game section should be required reading.

Other than that, going to a competition.

[jason_zielke]

It sounds like you are dealing with 2 different issues here: technical abilities that match the needs of FRC and context about FRC.

In both cases, new mentors need to come in with a focus on learning, rather than teaching. The best mentors I know are that way because they spend (or have spent) lots of time learning as a part of being on the team.

I have found that the former issue (direct technical abilities) is best learned through a mentoring approach (whether it is mentor to student or seasoned mentor to new mentor). We typically match our new mentors up with a seasoned mentor to learn from.

As for learning about context, going to a competition and understanding the game during play is the best approach. However, this experience can be simulated by reading a previous years game, watching videos and talking strategy/game play. Also, once they understand the game, go through pictures of robots on CD that were very successful at that game and talk through how they worked. We have found that this approach works well to get new students up to speed on context of FRC and I expect it would do the same for new mentors inexperienced with FRC.