Poor Dean's Homework 2013 Turnout

[Hallry]

Since the submittal period is now closed, I counted the Dean's Homework 2013 submissions in the Box.com submittal folder and gathered the following statistics:

• Out of 2,850 FRC Teams, only 43 submitted a video. That's just 1.5% (The reason I included 2014 rookie teams in that statistic is because a 2014 rookie team did in fact submit an entry, FRC Team 5038 from Israel. If you really wanted to use only the 2013 data, then it'd be 42/2,548 = 1.65%)
  
  
• Out of 3,000 FTC Teams, only 5 submitted a video. That's just 0.166...%.
  
  
• Out of 23,000 FLL Teams, just 2 submitted a video. That rounds to 0.01%
  
  
• And out of 3,800 Jr. FLL Teams, none submitted an entry. 0%.

With 188 days from announcement to due date, I'm wondering, why are these numbers so small? Yes most of the time was during the summer, but there was still about 3 and half months that teams were still in school when a <120 second video could have been made. There are also many teams who struggle to find sponsors, rookies, funds, etc. during the off-season, but I at least expected the percentages to be greater than what they are. If you were a team that didn't submit a video, why didn't you? Did you not have the time/resources, weren't aware, we pursuing other opportunities, etc.? And if you did submit an entry, why did you and how much effort did it take (time required, amount of people that worked on it, etc.)?

*Team Statistics retrieved from FIRST website here: http://www.usfirst.org/aboutus/first-at-a-glance

[Petzer]

That's strange... It wasn't totally mandatory, also there weren't any publicly known awards or incentives for submitting one. If either two were in place the turnout would've been much higher probably, the way I see it. That being said, I was shocked that only a very small number of teams submitted one. Many teams already have had plenty of video experience with Chairman's submissions and more.
What I noticed, apart from actually completing the "assignment", I'm assuming not many knew about it. Nobody really knew what it was or knew about it on my own team until I informed the rest of our leadership about making the video.

[Jon Stratis]

Dean's Homework every year is something that all teams should do, because the homework will help teams and FIRST accomplish their goals. Creating a video like this, for example, is something that teams can use in their promotional and fundraising activities, yet few teams do it.

So, why don't teams do it? There are a couple of reasons, I think.

First, most teams aren't at champs, and aren't there to hear the homework being given. For those teams, their season is already over, and they might not meet again until the fall. And once they do meet again, they're probably focused on other things (recruitment, fundraising, training, etc) and just don't think to go look up what Dean's Homework was.

Second, the benefit for teams isn't always directly apparent. It's not like the homework is required or earns them any direct benefit... the benefits come from how a team uses the results of the homework.

So, how do we fix this?

First, word on Dean's Homework needs to get out there more - Teams should be unable to avoid learning what the homework is (and by teams, I mean both mentors and students - it can easily be ignored in e-mail blasts that generally just go to mentors). We need to start talking about it at champs. Word needs to go out to the regional directors/planning committees to talk about it at off-season events in their area. We need to talk about it at kickoff. And it needs to not be due until a team's first regional (I know some teams that haven't even yet met since their last regional back in March!). I would be willing to bet that I could ask at my team's next meeting, and none of the students would be able to tell me what the homework was.

Second, there needs to be some sort of direct benefit/recognition to teams for completing the homework. While it adds some administrative overhead, I would support making completing the homework a requirement for Chairman's in future years. That one small change would get Dean's Homework much more visibility and participation.


I'm not positive, but I don't think my team submitted Dean's Homework this year. But that didn't stop us from creating a similar video to what the homework wanted in order to enter a contest to win $500 for the team from The Original Pink Box. The team saw a chance to get some direct, instant benefit from the activity, and took it. That's really what's missing from Dean's Homework.

[Brandon_L]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

(and by teams, I mean both mentors and students - it can easily be ignored in e-mail blasts that generally just go to mentors).

This is actually exactly what happens.

We see it, but its probably a general lack of interest. Its the offseason, not all teams meet, or have higher priorities. It just gets passed over.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by Brandon_L

This is actually exactly what happens.

We see it, but its probably a general lack of interest. Its the offseason, not all teams meet, or have higher priorities. It just gets passed over.

Most teams are still just scraping money together during the offseason. Many also don't meet prior to September, or when they do meet after September, it is for very few meetings just prior to Kickoff.

It might be like any other homework assignment that kids don't have to submit for a grade - who's actually going to do it, other than a small minority?

[PayneTrain]

Unlike Dean's Homework in the past, this "assignment" was something that most teams never have really done, and the bandwidth and overhead required by a team to do a project, that like Jon said, had no direct benefit, is hard to justify even for the relatively small number of teams who "meet year round". Teams have to raise money, train students, do community events, do some optional but beneficial work like putting together training sessions for team members or planning FLL tournaments or drafting legislation or helping kids apply to college...

This year, FIRST wanted teams to submit a 2 minute video about whatever for no clear reason. A lot of teams already put a ridiculous (in a good way) amount of effort and time into creating their 3-minute Chairman's Award video. To pull something liek this off, you'd have to probably be a large team of 70 or more students where a dedicated video subteam can justifiably form and not fold into an operations/outreach/media subteam, you'd have to meet all year, you'd have to have the available equipment, prior b-roll footage, people available to interview, and time on top of everything everyone does inside and outside of robotics the rest of the year,

[wilsonmw04]

Wow, I see a whole lot of excuses here. It's a two minute video. Most everyone has a video camera in their pocket right now. There are various free video editing software suites for educational use. Even if you don't meet during the summer, there were 3 months from Sept to now to get something together.


If it wasn't a priority, that's fine, but don't blame FIRST or Dean if you didn't get your homework done. Blame yourself.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

If it wasn't a priority, that's fine, but don't blame FIRST or Dean if you didn't get your homework done. Blame yourself.

Nobody was blaming FIRST.

[wilsonmw04]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

Nobody was blaming FIRST.

I don't know. It seems that way: there was no reward for doing it, it wasn't mandatory, it wasn't advertised. The time frame was all wrong, etc.

Maybe, this whole thread just rubs me the wrong way. I teach and hear excuses about not getting homework done. Some of the posts here reminded me of my students.

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

I don't know. It seems that way: there was no reward for doing it, it wasn't mandatory, it wasn't advertised. The time frame was all wrong, etc.

Maybe, this whole thread just rubs me the wrong way. I teach and hear excuses about not getting homework done. Some of the posts here reminded me of my students.

I think somebody already mentioned that many teams don't meet regularly through the summer or even the fall. I think it's rather self-evident why it is impractical or unrealistic to expect those teams to make a video, so I'll focus on why my team (a team going into our eighth competitive season, having won a couple of Engineering Inspiration Awards and a RCA along the way) didn't do the homework.

We didn't do the homework.

That's the summary of "why we didn't"-- heck, we even have a student that loves to do videos that, had he heard about this, would have leapt at the opportunity. Sometimes there is no excuse-- and sometimes there isn't any real consequence either.

That being said, I would hazard a guess that many of the teams that fall into our "boat" of having the resources but not making a video certainly have made good usage of their time during the fall-- we've been busy mentoring the seven new FTC teams that we started this year, thank-you-very-much, in addition to doing our own recruitment and fundraising.

[Jscout11]

Like other teams, the Dean's List Homework was just something that kind of fell to the side and was (wrongly) forgotten among a list of offseason projects, which was admittedly long this year for us (5 offseason events, complete renovation of our build space, major fundraising and planning for increased travel expenses, summer and fall weekly teaching sessions, 3 new FLL teams, planning for NJ State FLL and our district event, etc.)

That being said, we have a lot of footage from over the past year that was used for our weekly Build blogs and chairman's effort (both of which have already begun for the next year) and we have started to put together the video, regardless of the due date, as many others are starting to do.

But I don't agree with those who say "It's just a two minute video, teams could have easily pulled something together quickly." It's not the most challenging project, but I still think that if a team wasn't really going to/wasn't able based on time and available students to put in enough effort to make a well thought out, meaningful video, there would be no point to it, at least in my opinion.

[ebarker]

I'm not making excuses but since the OP asked a question.....

The reason we didn't is simply because we are out of bandwidth. We meet about 4 days a week from CMP through Kickoff and our current projects are burying us. We have another 3 minute video project that is going to take 3 months to do, minimum, and we are 6 weeks behind. This project has a higher project status than the homework so that's how that happened.

For the general question about all teams, there are already lot of comments, but I'll add the Parato principal, or the 80/20 rule. It is unfortunate but probably 80 % of the teams in the world don't meet that often right now if at all and are probably not motivated enough or capable enough to do the video. Maybe they excel in some area. Maybe they are in the top 10 % of robot building, or top 10 % of something else.

This whole Parato thing frustrates everyone everywhere in what are know as socially unconstrainted situations, like any volunteer organization.. Trying to get the 80% of the crowd to do as well as the upper 20 % is tough. It's just like 20 % of the team members build 80 % of the robot, etc.

I can rant forever but I'll stop here....

[MrBasse]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

I don't know. It seems that way: there was no reward for doing it, it wasn't mandatory, it wasn't advertised. The time frame was all wrong, etc.

Maybe, this whole thread just rubs me the wrong way. I teach and hear excuses about not getting homework done. Some of the posts here reminded me of my students.

I emphasized that part because I want to ask, when you teach you don't assign the homework clearly to less than 1/4 of the class at a major event and obscurely to the remainder who happen to be absent do you? We've never had the opportunity to go to St. Louis, but if we had we would have heard about this directly from the source. I looked back at email blasts and the homework assignment was mentioned three times (5/23, 10/4 as a side bar, and 10/17) and I can honestly tell you that at the times I got those emails, I never noticed them because it was the last thing on my mind. The only other place to find out about it was the FIRST website and there have been multiple threads about how easy it is to find things there...

I don't think anyone is making excuses, they are just giving their honest reasons for not getting it done. And never knowing about an assignment is a pretty great reason, not an excuse, for not doing it. We would like to give this a shot and see what we can come up with, but I'm not about to let my students do something with less than 100% effort just so they can get it done. So as was said earlier, we might still put something together, but it will be on our schedule and worked on until it is right.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

I don't know. It seems that way: there was no reward for doing it, it wasn't mandatory, it wasn't advertised. The time frame was all wrong, etc.

Maybe, this whole thread just rubs me the wrong way. I teach and hear excuses about not getting homework done. Some of the posts here reminded me of my students.

The difference between these posts and "the dog ate my homework" is that the latter is trying to avoid consequences. For ourselves at least, and I think most others, we're more than willing to own our decision. I can wish our priorities were different (like we didn't have to move for the 13th time), but I think the decision that led to us not finishing was correct for us in this case. We're trying to increase our bandwidth overall, which will hopefully change the outcome next time, but I don't regret it this time.

I'm happy to "blame" myself for it if you wish--I don't feel there's any fault in the rational decision to enrich and inspire in other ways more befitting of our circumstances. I saw this thread as the community endeavoring change the circumstances that led up to many teams' similar decisions.

[ChrisH]

Maybe most of us would rather build robots than make videos. While making videos is a lot easier than it used to be, it still requires a specific skill set to do well, and you can only be good at a limited number of things.

So if your team has a group of students that passionately wants to TELL the FIRST story, go for it. But don't get disappointed with teams that are busy BEING the FIRST story for not being storytellers too.