Mentors

[KenWittlief]

There are two aspects to a FIRST team

one is the part of the team that is very much like a HS club, like a chess club or ski club. There are meetings to schedule, uniforms, public service - and many other considerations that bond the students together as a unit, as a club, as a team - these things should definately be 'run' by the students

the other part is the engineering aspect of the robot design and build cycle. Unless your HS students have earned BSEE and BSME degreees already, how can they lead or run an engineering team?

If we could throw a box of parts at HS students and let them build a robot on their own, and have them somehow discover what engineering careers are like, then FIRST wouldnt be going through all this trouble to find corporate sponsers and thousands of mentors.

I think letting the students run and control the club/team aspect is excellent. But to let the students think they can compete against teams that have adult engineeing mentors would be cruel and pointless - all you are doing is setting them up to fail - and then they will come to the conclusion that engineering is complicated, too hard for them, something they are not good at - in other words, they will decide engineering sucks!

[Amanda Morrison]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

I think letting the students run and control the club/team aspect is excellent. But to let the students think they can compete against teams that have adult engineeing mentors would be cruel and pointless - all you are doing is setting them up to fail - and then they will come to the conclusion that engineering is complicated, too hard for them, something they are not good at - in other words, they will decide engineering sucks!

As a team with no adult engineering help, I'd like to think that this type of team is very possible. I don't believe that a team without the availability of adult engineers is 'cruel and pointless' by any means, and if anything, motivates the students to learn more about the subject to compete effectively.

Teams that are run by students are not necessarily destined to fail. Just because a team does not have mentors of its own does not mean that other teams cannot intervene and help. There are many successfully run student-led teams, and there are success stories from all over. While you are correct in saying that students should be in charge of the organizational matters of the team, a team is not being set up for failure in the instance that they do not have adult mentors.

No team in FIRST fails, engineerless or plentiful.

[KenWittlief]

there are many ways and degrees of failure for a FIRST team.

one I have (unfortunately) seen several times is a team that either cannot get their bot to run at all, cant get it to pass inspection, or they could not ship it by the deadline - remember the placebo bot from previous years?

its devistating to the students on a team if they goto a regional and there bot doent move in any of its matches

another level of failure would be if the students have great ideas, but are unable to implement any of them, because they dont have the knowhow - Ive said before, the technology we use in FIRST is not leading edge state of the art, its scraping edge :c) - but even still, if the students can implement their ideas they will only become frustrated, not inspired.

Over the years I have seen more and more help from one team to another - I believe you could post a request on CD to have someone write all your SW for you, or to design a 6 speed auto shifting tranny for you, and someone would step up and do it for your team

and I have seen teams completely rebuild another teams robot for them on thursday at a regional

but then, you DO have mentors helping you, they just arnt officially a part of your team - If a team is willing to accept help then you dont have to yell very loud - its available from all directions.