Hours worked

[sanddrag]

Between January 3rd, 2015 and February 22nd, 2015, Team 696 which consists of 36 students and six regular mentors has spent over 8,400 people-hours. Our average student attendance over this 7-week period is 202 hours per student with a high of 346 hours and a low of 92 hours, and a median attendance of 195 hours. These are all hours outside of classes during the school day.

[Monochron]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

Our average student attendance over this 7-week period is 202 hours per student with a high of 346 hours and a low of 92 hours, and a median attendance of 195 hours. These are all hours outside of classes during the school day.

I'm always amazed that students can put in those kind of hours and not have it seriously impact their school work. Any helpful tips I can give to parents who won't allow that kind of commitment?

[Allison K]

We just broke 2000 hours for the current school year

787 student hours so far if we only count build season.

At this point we don't track mentor hours.

Not bad for a 17 member team.

[Sam_Mills]

Originally Posted by MrJohnston

Yeah.... And we shrunk this year....
We've had as many as 140 kids on our time over the last couple years...

We'd like to split into two (or four??) different teams, but can only get one work space.

If you're serious about potentially budding off into multiple teams, contact David Bodmer, the head mentor for 11. Since starting a "beta team" for freshmen, more kids have had more to do, and a few other teams have followed or modified the model for themselves.

[skottmorris]

I might have missed it in all the replies, but what types of solutions are teams using to record time?

We know from experience that spreadsheets and paper recording has not been effective unless we task someone with it every meeting. This usually deteriorates over time because the kids are not interested in picking up this responsibility.

• Do you use a paper or electronic time clock?
• Do you use a spreadsheet or Google document?
• Do you use a web service?
• Do you use a mobile app?
• Do you use the school's attendance system?
• Do you use something else?

[Vladi03]

I did the math for my hours for these past 7 weeks and got 362.4 hours total just for me.

[EOC]

Originally Posted by skottmorris

I might have missed it in all the replies, but what types of solutions are teams using to record time?

We know from experience that spreadsheets and paper recording has not been effective unless we task someone with it every meeting. This usually deteriorates over time because the kids are not interested in picking up this responsibility.

• Do you use a paper or electronic time clock?
• Do you use a spreadsheet or Google document?
• Do you use a web service?
• Do you use a mobile app?
• Do you use the school's attendance system?
• Do you use something else?

We just use a paper sign in/out sheet. The students quite good with this.

[stingray27]

Originally Posted by skottmorris

I might have missed it in all the replies, but what types of solutions are teams using to record time?

We know from experience that spreadsheets and paper recording has not been effective unless we task someone with it every meeting. This usually deteriorates over time because the kids are not interested in picking up this responsibility.

• Do you use a paper or electronic time clock?
• Do you use a spreadsheet or Google document?
• Do you use a web service?
• Do you use a mobile app?
• Do you use the school's attendance system?
• Do you use something else?

We use a computer that has an RFID reader attached to an arduino connected to it. When students enter or leave (the computer is near the door), each student presents a card to the reader and it clocks them in or out. Alternatively, the computer screen has a local website that is always up that they can click on their picture to clock them in or out as well if they forgot their card

[Pretzel]

I'm not sure if my team logs hours specifically, we track attendance, but I personally log my hours spent and I'm up to 92 hours spent on robotics since Kickoff as of last night.

I wonder how many man-hours are spent on FRC by all the team combined throughout the build season?

[catacon]

Our shop is officially open 33 hours every week during the build season. We often have kids and mentors that put in more hours, though. There are on average 10 students and 5 mentors in the shop at any time, so that's close to 3100 man-hours in a build season.


And yeah...90 students?! We have trouble maintaining control when our full team of 20-30 students is at the shop.

[hardcopi]

Well for this season we are trying something different. I wrote a website that the team logs into and out of. Keeps track of hours, students, permission slips, events, sponsors, etc. Still VERY buggy, but it is getting there.

[Chinske4296]

We had a team of 75 last year and after winning our regional and attending worlds we received 140 applications for the team. We cut the team size to 50 members, and our team is at 90 hours per person since January 3rd. Probably a little more because sometimes we forget to sign in.

[HannahWilson]

To the best of my knowledge, I'm the only one on the team who has consistently logged time.

53 hours from October 20th through January 3rd
102 hours from January 3rd through 17th
155 total hours (9,300 minutes)

No wonder I don't have a life.

Disclaimer: I am a team captain and help with graphic design and marketing, really obsess over FRC, and am homeschooled so I can put in extra time on top of meetings. So this is more than the average Wired Wizard. But it's still a lot! And I can not believe it's actually stop build day today. My last year as a student on an FRC team. ;(

[audietron]

We started logging hours last year and kept better track of it. This year we have not been so consistent with keeping everything up to date. Last year at least, I had around 350 hours by the end of build season and I assume around the same amount if not more this year.
Do any teams use the hours to motivate students to show up more such as posting "rankings" for everyone to see?

[Michael Hill]

This year we installed a clock in/clock out system to track how much time we spend because we've never even had a great estimate in the past. Once we are done with the season, I'll try to remember to post some analysis in here.