At what point does it become unacceptable for a mentor to design/build the robot

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by Kusha

Obviously if students are being inspired then they are going to want to help design and build instead of watching. Watching someone build something leaves something to be desired.

Having been a student and now a mentor I totally agree. I got started in FRC when I was in 7th grade and about as "useful" as a wet pool noodle. I was very involved for the next six years, and as you can imagine got considerably more useful as I got older. During this time I got to interact with a wide variety of mentors with a wide variety of styles.

I did not mentor a team in college (although I would occasionally drop in on 2791). IMO, this was a critical piece of the puzzle for me. I was never in that awkward phase that is somewhere between student and mentor. I was very clearly a student, and now am a mentor. (Which may scare me, but...)

I do not think there are any adults (or at least exceedingly few) in this program that would intentionally block-out students. It is most likely that they just don't remember when they didn't know how to do something, and are unsure of how to involve students. Or maybe they feel the clock breathing down their backs, and they want to make sure that the team fields a working robot. Or, you get a bunch of technical experts in a room they start going at it without them even realizing that they are excluding everyone else. (eventually you have to fire the engineers and just build the darn thing)

What I consider one my greatest mentoring strengths is I remember when I was a student in varying degrees from "completely useless" to "Mr. Mentor is here for insurance reasons" And I try really hard to hand out tasks that fit where kids are today AND give them an opportunity to grow in the future. And I think the people that stick with this program think along those lines, but sometimes people who are in their first season or two haven't figured that out yet.

For example, freshman and sophomores generally have a really hard time drilling a perpendicular hole with a DeWalt drill. I am not sure what the scientific reason for this is, but I know I was also totally incapable of drilling a perpendicular hole for a long time, so you either have them use a drill press or have someone else sight the drill (and continue moving it back straight when they drift off!) To continue the example you may have to drill a particularly difficult hole during week 1, show someone how to adjust the clutch on a cordless drill in week 3, and just ask someone to mount a reinforcement brace on the robot in the pit.

This thread has some really great insights into Doing / Showing / Asking from people much smarter than I.

[JohnChristensen]

Originally Posted by Kusha

Sometimes I feel that because mentors have been doing this a long time they don't take into consideration or even test students ideas. The mentality that students can not come up with good solutions, or rather the mentality that the mentors designs are more correct keeps coming into play. Students, if dedicated enough spend as much or more time coming up with solutions, and it isn't all that inspiring to be shot down without any thought or even any testing. I'm saying this from personal experience, sometimes I feel like I have to go on my own to build something to prove it will work and after it does suddenly it is looked at more seriously.

Obviously if students are being inspired then they are going to want to help design and build instead of watching. Watching someone build something leaves something to be desired.

To clarify, I am not attacking any teams in this thread. I am talking about team dynamics.

On our FRC team I can say with confidence that every idea that has ever made it onto one of our robots has been modified, tweaked, corrected, and/or simplified before going into production. This is normal and happens in real life every day. In my day job I work for a local power utility, we install equipment in the field that will likely be in place for the next 30-50 years. That means the engineer who designed the system is not likely to be around when it is removed. Our control systems and mechanical designs must be able to withstand time (decay) and design brain loss (engineer retirement). Since I support systems designed before I was born and the same will be true for someone else in twenty years, it is imperative to refine ideas until they are in the most simple form possible.

I am not sure exactly what is going on with your team but I would encourage you to think about the advice your mentors are offering you. I simplify systems everyday which gives me experience in taking complicated designs and making them work even better. My guess is your mentors can do the same.

Remember build season is six weeks, it will never be possible to test or refine every idea people present. Sometimes the mentors can see that even after refining, your idea will never get to the starting point of another idea. This experience is invaluable. As a mentor myself the thing I value most is student initiative. Go build a prototype and test it, then try and make it simpler right away, finally make a final case for the design. In the end, I believe in evaluating ideas by removing who designed/created it and then comparing each system side by side, the one that integrates into the entire system (complete robot) the best should be used.

We had some great ideas this year for sorting Frisbees, but I could see right away that they would not fit in our robot design due to orientation and frame size. Students got upset when I wanted to move on because of the same mentor/student idea origination. We are now building a different design that everyone is happy with and to be honest, I am really not sure if any one person came up with the current idea. It has been through so many revisions that it must have 20 sets of fingerprints on it by now. I use this as an example to show how systems evolve; your idea might not be used verbatim now but later a small piece of it may find its way into a much bigger and better design.

Just my $0.02.

[Taylor]

Does anybody truly believe there are teams out there where the students "just watch the mentors"?
That just seems like a huge false dichotomy that's been used as the crux of a lot of arguments.

[Anupam Goli]

Originally Posted by Taylor

Does anybody truly believe there are teams out there where the students "just watch the mentors"?
That just seems like a huge false dichotomy that's been used as the crux of a lot of arguments.

I've yet to hear about one, though I hear of many complaining of them. Truth is, if there ever was a team like that, it likely disbanded the year following. You need students to continue to have a team, and most students are probably not as enthusiastic about just watching others.

[LH Machinist]

Back to the original point of this thread, at what point does it become unacceptable? I have read both sides of this issue and I propose an easy solution. During elimination matches...only students may touch the robot and mentors may get no closer than 5 feet away. This rule would virtually eliminate the design/build conflict, since maintainability will rely strictly with the students. If they didn't design/build it...it would almost be impossible for them to repair it.

[Anupam Goli]

Originally Posted by LH Machinist

Back to the original point of this thread, at what point does it become unacceptable? I have read both sides of this issue and I propose an easy solution. During elimination matches...only students may touch the robot and mentors may get no closer than 5 feet away. This rule would virtually eliminate the design/build conflict, since maintainability will rely strictly with the students. If they didn't design/build it...it would almost be impossible for them to repair it.

You're going to find yourself by yourself if you're in support of that. What would happen if a student couldn't diagnose what was wrong? What if the repair involves work that students aren't trained to do (Welding, etc.)? It's not black and white, and you can't just place a blanket rule like that. Everyone will suffer from a rule like this. Shunning your mentors means you are getting rid of your most valuable resources.

[BobbyVanNess]

Our team has struggled with some of the issues you all have been talking about. One thing with student involvement, is that the students themselves must have the desire to commit to the team, and all of its operations. I am currently a student, and I've see those around me complain about not having enough student involvement (particularly last year), but there have been cleanup meetings after stop build day when i was one of only a few students to attend.

This year, we've been running the team entirely differently, where students have been doing almost all of the prototyping, with mentor assistance on machining. When we have to make a design decision, we discuss it in an open meeting, where our committed students and mentors voice their opinions, and we come to a collective agreement. So far, this has settle all of our problems, instead of polarizing the team on multiple different ideas, and getting hung up on the decision making.

Last year, I think everyone, including our own mentors, realized that we needed to become a more student oriented team. That being said, the students need to take it upon themselves to come in and build their prototypes, get their ideas heard, build a strong knowledge base of FIRST, and understand what is feasible during a 6 week build season.

[bduddy]

Originally Posted by Wing

What would happen if a student couldn't diagnose what was wrong? What if the repair involves work that students aren't trained to do (Welding, etc.)? It's not black and white, and you can't just place a blanket rule like that. Everyone will suffer from a rule like this. Shunning your mentors means you are getting rid of your most valuable resources.

That should be on you and them. What if they're not very good at driving the robot, does that mean you should do it? And if you have to do welding or other similar work during elimination matches, then you probably have bigger problems... Not saying I'm in favor of the suggestion, but I don't think these are particularly compelling counterpoints.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by bduddy

That should be on you and them. What if they're not very good at driving the robot, does that mean you should do it? And if you have to do welding or other similar work during elimination matches, then you probably have bigger problems... Not saying I'm in favor of the suggestion, but I don't think these are particularly compelling counterpoints.

This might not be one either, as it depends on the student/mentors in question, but a mentor not being allowed to work on the robot could be the difference between an orderly but hurried major repair (of quality better than "It should work for this match") and a panicky, chaotic major repair of poor quality. Just that calming presence and experience troubleshooting that a good mentor can bring (or fake, if need be) could be the difference.


I agree, it depends on the team. For me personally, if a student is politely asking a mentor to let them do the job, and the mentor is entirely refusing for no reason, that is right about the unacceptable point (mentors refusing because the student doesn't know how to do the job yet and failing to teach is also unacceptable to me--I don't call that mentoring). To any student I happen to work with, that happens to read this, if I'm doing a job you can do, feel free to push me out of the way (though asking first is encouraged in case I'm doing something that needs a safe shutdown).

[Ivan Malik]

TL;DR skip to the 3rd paragraph...

I have been both a student and a mentor, and have seen the over bearing mentor archetype from both perspectives. I, as a student, fought frequently with the mentors on my FRC team to allow other students to become more involved with the robot, instead of relegating them to tasks like button making. As a sophomore, I gave away my own assigned jobs to two or three people and stood by and filled the role of mentor, so that they at least could go home and tell their parents that they did something that day. I used every approach known to man to confront the mentors, each time trying to limit as much damage to my fellow students as possible. It got to the point that, I was asked to leave the team by the mentors because other students were starting to take up arms as well. I was viewed as a troublemaker who was trying to instigate a hostile takeover of the team. The same team where it was common place for students to watch a group of mentors huddled in another room talking design. No attempt by the mentors to include the students; every so often a student would attempt to push their way in, but to only be treated like they didn't exists.

As an FLL mentor, I watched as other mentors and head coaches would simply change code or redesign the whole robot and not explain it to the students. When parents would enter the room, at the end of meetings to pick up their kids, these mentors would act quite differently. Any attempt to talk to these colleagues about their actions would end in their denial the events ever happened.

For me the line is right where those who are on the outside looking in think it should be. Where parents who are not involved, sponsors who hear a team's presentation, even just the innocent bystander on the street who wanders into a competition think it should be. While they may not understand all of the trials and tribulations of the process of "inspiration," they are the ones who ultimately judge the success or failure of the team. How would they view the team in its current state, if they could be a fly on the wall at meetings? How would they view FIRST at large if all they had was a snapshot of this one team?

Try and do this for something you're not even remotely involved in. Then come back and try and look at your team in the same way you did that thing. It can be quite eye opening...

[Jim Wilks]

Originally Posted by Taylor

Does anybody truly believe there are teams out there where the students "just watch the mentors"?
That just seems like a huge false dichotomy that's been used as the crux of a lot of arguments.

A few years back I visited a team asking for assistance. When the conversation turned to how last years bot was built, the students told me "the mentors built it and dropped it off to us just before our competition"

[Mr. Mike]

Kusha,
This debate has been around ever since the beginning. There will never be a defined line. It is a team decision, not a personal or even a FIRST decision. The team decision will change from year to year. Mentors will come and go as do the students. Skill level and enthusiasm changes with each person.

Remember there is always something to learn in every situation.

[Leor Buch]

Originally Posted by Taylor

Does anybody truly believe there are teams out there where the students "just watch the mentors"?
That just seems like a huge false dichotomy that's been used as the crux of a lot of arguments.

A friend of mine from a team near ours told me that they receive the bot whole without so much as a strategy meeting. while he may be exaggerating most of his teammates (95%) could not answer simple design questions about their bot.

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by Taylor

Does anybody truly believe there are teams out there where the students "just watch the mentors"?
That just seems like a huge false dichotomy that's been used as the crux of a lot of arguments.

Yes, although exceedingly rare based on the people I've talked to that were on one. I would be willing to be there are a much larger proportion of teams where students feel disenfranchised by the amount of work done by mentors, and an even larger proportion of teams that get accused of being "just watch the mentors" when they are in fact a happy partnership. The first step is always to talk to them as if students are off gossiping in the corner most of the mentors I know are content to continue working without you -- but we'd like it even more if you'd help us! Plenty of adults would love to teach you, but are hesitant to tell kids to get back to work that they did not raise.

When 1276 won BAE in 2006 (my then HS team), we got accused of being mentor built on CD (I can't find the thread, it was an implication but clearly us)! I can assure you that we were in fact a happy 50/50 partnership, and as I begin the journey into being a mentor I find myself eternally grateful to my Dad, Keith, Joe, Phil, and others that volunteered their valuable time to teach me things I didn't even know I was learning until I have had to apply them later.

It is my opinion that teams should refer to their robot as "our" robot. It is not the "kid's" robot, and it is not the "mentor's" robot, it is "our" robot. Successful FRC teams build partnerships and people that many companies would pay good money for. Working at a big company I've taken classes and listen to plenty of talks about leadership, and have friends taking MBA classes. IFI and AM have figured this out...

I think a lot of companies give FIRST/FIRST teams money for not-quite-the-right reason. They consider it training for their future workforce, but they miss out on all the off-hours lessons their current employees could benefit from. I am 100% certain I would not be where I am today with FIRST.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Taylor

Does anybody truly believe there are teams out there where the students "just watch the mentors"?
That just seems like a huge false dichotomy that's been used as the crux of a lot of arguments.

I do.

Sometimes my students just watch me while I'm trying to debug a particularly hard problem. The process is more important than the actual details of solving the problem.

What makes this program awesome is that more often I sit back and watch them.

Maybe instead of basing judgements on who they see doing the work people should not be so quick to judge.