Limits on Team Hours

[Foster]

If you say you're pulling in 400 hours in the robotics lab (meaning, not counting work at home). Even if you work all seven days of the week, you're still pulling in 9.5 hours PER DAY!!!! 9.5 hours of robotics everyday, plus 7 hours of school, and there's only 7.5 hours left in the day....Not to be rude or anything, but thats a little much.....

It is, or is it? and that is what this discussion is about. (and you forgot those 18 hour weekends) In a four month period can you do 400 hours? I'll speak to my case of working, being a VEX mentor and being an FRC mentor. The time commitment is huge. I spend a good 1/4 of my time in emails, ordering parts and doing updates to the web site to keep people informed. And in some ways it matches what happens on a big project launch. So I spend 'spare time' doing robot team stuff.

Perhaps this is what the 2011 season is about for your team. As has been observed time and time again - if you think this about robots - you're missing the point.

It's never been about the robots. But the robots make an interesting misdirection that we all use. So its ALL about the robots.

200 true hours in the lab

Over 30% of my time is ordering parts, driving for parts, updating websites, dealing with emails and putting together required paperwork. Next time your robot club meets, stand up and go "Hey who is the NEMO (Non Engineering Mentor) and what do you do?" And when they go through the 100's of tasks that happen behind the scenes try not to be surprised that the engineering part of a FIRST robot is less than 1/2 of the things that go on.

Oh yea I forgot, reading and posting on CD, thats a good 10 hours a week, but thats another thread.

[216Robochick288]

I couldnt tell you how many hours me or my teammates put into the robots, however I think our team has a wonderful system of dealing with grades, which I think the hour limit may have been put for fear of Homework neglect

Grades: You MUST have a C+ [about 79%] or better to participate, and either a high B- or better [84+%] to go on trips depending on how far and how long we are leaving for. If you drop below the participation grade you must go to study hall and get your grade up to come back, or we assume you think Robotics is not worth the efforts to be in. [If you dont come to study hall when your grade drops and/or dont get your grades up in a time period to be decided by the coach you get kicked]

It works really well... After starting this, our avg team GPA came up almost .5! Its a huge difference than before when during build season when all our grades got ignored and dropped far below what collages would look for.

Yes, robotics is a good thing, a good way to learn, and a good thing on applacations for Collage and work, but grades are far more important than saying "I was in robotics and neglected my grades..." on collage Apps.

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by Foster

It is, or is it? and that is what this discussion is about. (and you forgot those 18 hour weekends) In a four month period can you do 400 hours? I'll speak to my case of working, being a VEX mentor and being an FRC mentor. The time commitment is huge. I spend a good 1/4 of my time in emails, ordering parts and doing updates to the web site to keep people informed. And in some ways it matches what happens on a big project launch. So I spend 'spare time' doing robot team stuff.

While this thread has meandered through many good topics throughout its 80 posts, it's important to remember the original context. From the very first post:

Originally Posted by hg273

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.

Putting in 400 hours of work over 6 weeks is 2.5x more time per week then 400 hours over 4 months. It was also specified as being in lab time, so you can presume that there was more time spent out of lab. Lastly, it was specified as student(s). Presumably, less people need to worry about your workload then a student.

Given the constraints of the original poster, I find those hours to be excessive, like the person you quoted. Changing the constraints to the way you stated them is much more reasonable, but isn't what we were asked to consider.

[Garret]

My team is literally student led in every way we have 1 mentor who helps with the mechanics, a team member who graduated but helps with programming, a teacher advisor who only attends tournaments, and a few other mentors who show up on weekends sometimes.

The reason for our lack of mentors is that, after a management change at the company my dad (our coach and primary mentor) works for he has been unable to commit to anywhere near as much time as before. to compound this problem, we already had our long time mentor from JPL go to work for a different company and has been only able to attend practices on the weekends.

If my school(s) put limits on the time I could put in during the season I really think that it would not do me (~4.5 GPA) or the team any good. My brother and I put in countless hours during the season. On our team the more experience team members (like myself and other group leaders) end up assuming a mentor-like role at practices. As a result our experienced members will end up putting in 3-4 hr. a night during the school week at build sessions and additional 8-10 hr. a day on weekends. I also have to handle all of the CAD for my team and end up putting in anywhere from 40-100 hrs. in on my own time to CAD up the robot. My brother the team president has to plan out the meetings and any other team event on top of handling sponsors and the registration stuff. In the last week those student leaders will end up putting in about 150 hrs. as we finalize the robot.

If a time limit were imposed on my team it would likely decapitate the leadership and would either cause the team to collapse (which we are already in danger of) or we would have to just ignore the restriction (which wouldn't be that hard for us considering I live at our build site, my house). I don't know how many other teams have a situation similar to ours but if it were to happen to my team the likely result would be no team.

my estimates for the hours put in on our team are:
Me ---- 500+ hr. (I only have school 3 hours a day for most of the season.)
my brother, and VP ---- 400 hr. each
Other team leaders (8 members) ---- 250+ hr.
Regular team members (10 members) ---- 100+ hr.
Club members (15 members) ---- 40 hr.
A large number of the hours for our team members come in the last 4-5 days of the build when we usually have a 4 day weekend and meetings run 15-20 hr. a day for some members.

I think a wiser and more effective solution would be to maintain a minimum GPA like you would on a sports team. That way the team leaders, who I can say that on my team all have high grades, can still lead the team.

[Chris is me]

Maybe the school would be willing to work on a system like this:
A average: 500 hours / 6 weeks
B average: 400 hours / 6 weeks
C average: 200 hours / 6 weeks
D average: 100 hours / 6 weeks

Though, it's important to note that FIRST is the kind of program that brings relevance back to school for the talented kids who've just given up.

[Dale]

While requiring a certain GPA in order to qualify for the team would be fine at most schools (we don't have letter grades as such) with only a six week build season a student can destroy their standing in a class before that reality is apparent to the team, parents or the administration. By the time the grades come out at the end of the semester it's too late to do anything about it.

In the past I've told teachers and parents to keep me in the loop if they notice a student is having problems. That works only sporadically, though.

The course workload at our school got so intense a few years ago that the administration instituted a school-wide effort to restrict the amount of homework a particular class can require per week, the amount of practice time a sports coach can require, etc. Until this coming year robotics has not been subject to these limits because the time you put in is voluntary once you exceed our 50hr per build season requirement. This new 200 hrs-in-the-lab circuit breaker is consistent with this idea of not letting one class or activity completely block out everything else in a student's life. Note this limit doesn't include time at home working on robotics, competitions, outreach events, etc.

I'm keeping an open mind about it.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Dale

While requiring a certain GPA in order to qualify for the team would be fine at most schools (we don't have letter grades as such) with only a six week build season a student can destroy their standing in a class before that reality is apparent to the team, parents or the administration. By the time the grades come out at the end of the semester it's too late to do anything about it.

In the past I've told teachers and parents to keep me in the loop if they notice a student is having problems. That works only sporadically, though.

The course workload at our school got so intense a few years ago that the administration instituted a school-wide effort to restrict the amount of homework a particular class can require per week, the amount of practice time a sports coach can require, etc. Until this coming year robotics has not been subject to these limits because the time you put in is voluntary once you exceed our 50hr per build season requirement. This new 200 hrs-in-the-lab circuit breaker is consistent with this idea of not letting one class or activity completely block out everything else in a student's life. Note this limit doesn't include time at home working on robotics, competitions, outreach events, etc.

I'm keeping an open mind about it.

On RUSH we had grade reports we had to have our teachers sign every week. I know you don't have grades in the traditional sense but would having teachers sign off that a student is performing adequately in their class be an acceptable method for determining if they are keeping up?

Also, while I disagree with the principle of telling students that they cannot spend more time doing X than a certain amount I have to say I like the concept of this policy. Perhaps the 200 hr hard cap could be relaxed a little but overall it doesn't seem like the sort of knee jerk reaction some school policies feel like. Additionally, it sounds like the school administration is really in touch with the needs of their students and would be willing to work with you should this policy be shown to have a negative affect on the program.