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Unread 05-04-2005, 22:45
Chris V 1503 Chris V 1503 is offline
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Re: When do mentors go too far?

Hey all,

I'm from team 1503 and what Karthik, Tristan, and Dereck said is 100% true. The mentors only helped us with the designing process. I would know it, I'm the leader of the Design & Build team for team 1503 and I basically along with a few others built the entire robot. Tell me how it feels after spending 3 hours designing a wheel, then spend 4 hours infront of a CNC machine making the wheel???? I had to do this for 28 wheels I spent almost half of the three weeks cutting wheels and various small parts that was designed between the three schools. Our mentors from 1114, 1503 and 1680 was basically there to help us along the way. Advice on how to make these parts, thats all. When we packed the robot into the crate on ship day. I had about 4 tears in each eye just watching all the blood, sweat, long nights, and hours I put into the robots. I had only missed 1 day out of the entire build season. It was our idea to build three identical robots.

Last edited by Chris V 1503 : 05-04-2005 at 22:47.
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Unread 06-04-2005, 06:32
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Re: When do mentors go too far?

Quote:
Originally Posted by newton418
The team I am on (418, Purple Haze, LASA Robotics) is a team made up of students, one teacher (who is our coach), one mentor, one welder and a parents association. The parents association handles the money, provides transportation and leads the “frou crew,” which puts up flags and shiny things in the stands. Our teacher occupies himself with the paper work, making sure we have materials, dealing with the school and of course teaching his classes... Besides this the kids do everything.
Thank you for responding to my question. As you've stated, the students on your team do everything... related to the robot. So you have a very vested interest in that part of the team. I encourage your team to branch out next year and recruit students to get involved in the other aspects of the team. Get the student who excels in Math to help set up the budget; ask the school newspaper to recommend a student who can write well to help you with Public Relations; find someone who is interested in art to design your t-shirts and buttons and make your flags and shiny things... Encourage all team members to learn about the flip side to your organization. The goal of FIRST is to inspire students about science and technology but it doesn't say anything about limiting the inspiration to those students who naturally gravitate towards those subjects! Get the humanities students interested in science and technology and THEN we're accomplishing the goals of FIRST!
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Unread 06-04-2005, 09:19
Steve W Steve W is offline
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Re: When do mentors go too far?

Please do not assume that what I am about to say shows anything against student built robots. I will be talking generally not specifically.

Engineers have years of experience and training. They have developed a knowledge base on which to work. There are some things that they don't even try because they know it won't work. This saves time and frustration when you only have 6 weeks to build. Students have enthusiasm, desire, energy and no preconceived ideas. They don't know what will or won't work or maybe a better way to do the same thing. They work on a trial and error system (I do too, I'm not an engineer) which takes a lot of time and effort to sometimes produce nothing. This is why we need engineers. Their abilities and insight actually let us accomplish more than the sum of our parts. Can student run teams work? Yes. Can Mentor/Engineer run teams work? Yes. Can the two work together? Yes.

We should not be debating "When do mentors go too far?" but how do they feel that their team works and inspires with mentor/ engineers doing what they do. This would be only seen and recognized by the members of that team as they are the ones spending the time and seeing what is being done.

I know personally that our team is becoming more student run than the first year i was there. This is great and it inspires me as a mentor. Teams will go through different cycles in their growth. Every 4 years a team has been changed over with all new personalities and abilities. This is what challenges the mentors. We don't just have to inspire you but also everyone that comes after you. FIRST is a great program! Let's not tear other teams down when you are looking on from the outside. As a famous saying goes, don't criticize someone till you have walked a mile in their shoes.
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Unread 05-04-2005, 16:50
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Re: When do mentors go too far?

Quote:
handing students fabricated parts and having them bold them together is not what this is all about
Sorry but I have to post about this statement too. I am High School sophmore and this year, as you may or may not know, 229 worked with the Thunder Chickens(217) to create a tower that worked to both teams advantage. While we students didn't fabricate this extendo, we had a lot of input on what we wanted it to do. We also helped to design some of the features of this tower. Sure there might not have been as much input as previous years due to the distance between the 2 teams and such. Yet we still put together a robot with a lot of student designs and ideas in it. There will, for as long as i am on this team, be a lot of student fabrication, design, and build put into 229's robots.

We don't have your GM engineers or profesional machinists, we have a bunch of college kids and high schoolers building a robot. In the end I think I like this better, these college kids are always open to our ideas and designs. They stress the importance of student ideas during the design and build process. Example: I had designed a gripper for our robot this year. At the meeting when i was going to present it, we were shown a design one of the college kids came up with. I told the mentors how much better I liked this design, but they still insisted on taking the time to go over the design with me. Me and a few other students then helped to make the lance design we are now using better. My original idea may not have gone on the robot, but alot of other ideas of mine went into making our lance/robot better.

Last year i got all excited about a couple of chain tensioners i had designed/built/assembled for the robot. This seemed to me to be a huge acomplishment for me as a freshman. After we got the robot back from Nationals I sat and stared at it. I could list off all of the parts i helped to design/build/assemble/fix.

When you look at these robots or talk to the students, I'm sure they can tell you about how they were inspired by their mentors and the entire build process. Whether they designed a part of the bot or not. They are, most likely, still inspired by the experience. It may not even br the building that inspires them, to go on into the fields of science and technology, it's really the experience that brings them back

As for students in the pits, we have a pit crew of around 5 people. Two college students and three high schoolers, I also jump in if there is work that needs to be done. whenever there is a job that needs to be done, there is a high schooler on it. the college students are there to make sure it gets done correctly. And if we don't know how to fix something, they are there to teach us how.

Quote:
The end point is that a lot of inspiration can be had on both ends of the spectrum. I don't ever want to see the highly engineered robots go away; after all, that's what makes all of the people in the stands say "WOW - I wish I could've done THAT!" To me, there's a lot of inspiration in that.
I agree. These highly engineered robots are one of the big reasons i come back every year. I am always saying, "John, can you tell me how that works?" or "Carne, can we build one of those for the robot?" Last year at Nats i took a walk down murders row and stood staring at Wildstangs bot with all the sheet metal fabrication and asked John, "We really need to do that next year, can we?" These amazing robots may be designed largely by engineers, but they always inspire me.

Sorry for my long post and incessant ranting. I am also sorry if I got a little off topic. And if it may not all make sense , these are my feelings and may not reflect those of my fellow team mates.

I don't have anything against/see anything wrong with having professional engineers and machinists as team mentors, this is just the setup i am used to and like.
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Unread 04-04-2005, 13:17
Dave Flowerday Dave Flowerday is offline
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Re: When do mentors go too far?

This discussion has come up over, and over, and over, and over, and.... use the search feature to find out how those discussions went.

In a nutshell, however, FIRST stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. Go read the "About FIRST" at their website. It never says anything about being a competition where students build a robot all by themselves.

Additionally, as many many others have warned, be careful what you assume about the way a team operates. A team may function a lot differently than what you perceive.
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Unread 04-04-2005, 13:20
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Re: When do mentors go too far?

I had the same thought when I was at the Greater Toronto Regional and the Finger Lakes Regional. At GTR, I saw three collaborators that where all designed by a GM engineer. To my knowledge the students had no involvement with the development process. At FLR, I saw an adult scouting team and a lone adult working on a robot.

This level of adult involvement takes away from what FIRST is all about, the inspiration of students.
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Unread 04-04-2005, 13:25
Dave Flowerday Dave Flowerday is offline
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Re: When do mentors go too far?

Quote:
Originally Posted by plutonium83
To my knowledge the students had no involvement with the development process.
(Emphasis mine) And what knowledge would that be? Did you actually go and talk to them? Did you ask them about the process they used? Were the kids on the team excited to be there and having a good time (perhaps, even, being inspired)?

It's not fair to anyone on those teams to say things like this, even if you think or know it to be correct. There are many many measures of success for a FIRST robotics team and just because one team's measure does not fit the idea you have in your head does not give you the right to criticize them publicly.
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Unread 04-04-2005, 13:31
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Re: When do mentors go too far?

*sigh* To each their own, and well, we run our team where the students design, build, and do everything themselves with mentor help. We have students working on the robot all the time in the pits, and our mentors rarely handle it. That's how we run our team. While I do have personal preferences about how a team is run and I wish it was that way for ALL teams, it simply isn't, and with an organization as big as FIRST, there will be contradictions in ideas.
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Unread 04-04-2005, 13:32
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Re: When do mentors go too far?

Perhaps if I had my parents do my homework for me, that is certainly a different way to do my schoolwork, but does it make me more knowledgeable?

The same thing applies to robotics. If the adults are doing all the work, that takes away from the student experience, which is why the adults are there in the first place.

Last edited by plutonium83 : 04-04-2005 at 13:40.
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Unread 04-04-2005, 13:39
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Re: When do mentors go too far?

Quote:
Originally Posted by plutonium83
Perhaps if I had my parents do my homework for me, that is certainly a different way to do my schoolwork, but does it make me more knowledgeable?
Plutonium,

We all understand your views and some will agree with you, but please know that this debate has been circling the CD drain for years with no conclusion. To recap:

1. All teams are different and FIRST places the "Inspiration" and "Recognition" above all else.

2. It is truly impossible to know a team, their process, and who is doing/learning what just by watching them at a regional. I tried it early in my FIRST career and was wrong more than I was right.

3. Each team has the right to do this any way they choose to. FIRST has made its standards on this issue clear, therefore we respect all apporaches and work to create meaningful experiences for students on our individual teams in our own ways.
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Last edited by Rich Kressly : 14-04-2005 at 15:01.
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Unread 04-04-2005, 14:11
Dave Flowerday Dave Flowerday is offline
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Re: When do mentors go too far?

Quote:
Originally Posted by plutonium83
Perhaps if I had my parents do my homework for me, that is certainly a different way to do my schoolwork, but does it make me more knowledgeable?
Except your goal with homework is to learn that material. FIRST is not about teaching you how to build a robot - Dean, Woodie, and others have made that quite clear. FIRST is about giving you a chance to interact with engineers and see what the engineering and technology world is all about so that hopefully you'll be interested enough to pursue a career in one of those fields.

Believe me, I know where you are coming from. I spent 3 years as a student on a smaller team. I had the same opinions as you of large teams that "appear" to have everything done by the adults. I heard the rumors (and, sadly, I probably contributed to their spread) that some teams' robots were built "behind the scenes" by the engineers and ship-day was the first day that the students even saw the robot and were then just trained to drive it by the adults. I noticed that the big-name teams tended to win more awards and I "knew" there was some sort of conspiracy there causing it.

The irony is that now I am a member of one of the teams which I used to dislike because I thought it was a team where only adults did the building and the kids didn't get to do anything. Of course I now know that my opinion was misguided. In reality, my current team which I thought was so different from my old team really isn't that different at all. Students on both teams get plenty of opportunity to do hands-on work. The primary exception in raw part fabrication - we use Motorola's shop and because of that there's legal reasons why we can't let students use certain equipment.

Trust me, my team is aware of what some people think about the way our team is run. Even though they don't really know, it's still disappointing that that's what some others think of us (no, you did not say anything about my team, but if we had been at Finger Lakes then you probably would have been just as likely to say "Motorola" instead of "GM").
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Unread 05-04-2005, 09:27
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Re: When do mentors go too far?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave Flowerday
In reality, my current team which I thought was so different from my old team really isn't that different at all. Students on both teams get plenty of opportunity to do hands-on work. The primary exception in raw part fabrication - we use Motorola's shop and because of that there's legal reasons why we can't let students use certain equipment.

Trust me, my team is aware of what some people think about the way our team is run. Even though they don't really know, it's still disappointing that that's what some others think of us (no, you did not say anything about my team, but if we had been at Finger Lakes then you probably would have been just as likely to say "Motorola" instead of "GM").
You are, to a large extent, describing "The Pink Team" as well as WildStang. Our parts are fabricated in a NASA shop which, like the Motorola shop, can allow only shop employees to operate certain equipment. Still, students help assemble the robot and, more importantly, students are heavily involved in deciding the functions of our robot, the type of drive base, etc. If you look at our robot up close, as with WindStang's, it is obvious that the machine's parts were not made in someone's garage with a hack saw and a file, but that doesn't mean the students don't learn anything and are not inspired. The students have great pride in, and feel "ownership" in our robot, even though they don't run the water jet machine that makes a lot of those cool looking parts.

There are compromises in all FIRST teams. To me, my team of several years, TechnoKats, has the best of all worlds in that they have their own shop with enough equipment to fabricate most of their parts. In that shop, students run mills, lathes, etc. and make many or the robot's parts. Still teams like my present team, and the opposite extreme of teams with no resources having to built their robot with "hack saws and files," can provide inspiration to the students. This year FIRST has done the teams with few resources a big service by providing the very good "kitbot" transmission that makes it easy for a team to have a decent drive base.
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Last edited by Kit Gerhart : 05-04-2005 at 12:48. Reason: to fix typo(s)
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Unread 04-04-2005, 13:43
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Re: When do mentors go too far?

This always has been, and always will be an issue. In my opinion, there is no standard correct answer. Rather, the balance between mentor (e.g. adult) and student activities must be determined by each individual team, and be revisited each and every season. This balance will be determined by the capabilities of the students AND mentors with the ultimate goal being to provide the most beneficial experience for the students.

For our team, the mentors make every effort to stand back and act as advisers during every aspect of robot design and construction. Sometimes we do feel the need to step in to settle arguments, re-focus the direction of the design/build, and to remind the students of certain physical laws that may prevent their design ideas from working as anticipated (gravity comes to mind). There have also been times when the mentors will develop alternate design implementations and, working alone, build them, to demonstrate more options that we want the students to consider.

For all our efforts to stay in the background as much as possible, sometimes the students still feel that we are "doing too much". In these cases, we just grin and bear it. There have also been times when the students have asked us to do more. As I said, there is no formula to identify the correct balance.

I also think that, the only time this becomes a real problem is when the mentors define exactly what there role will be and that role eclipses the students participation in the design, build or competition. (as in the case mentioned in another post where the students were not even allowed to touch the robot in the pits). Unless this is what the students have requested (not likely), this is wrong.
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Unread 04-04-2005, 14:05
Tom Bottiglieri Tom Bottiglieri is offline
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Re: When do mentors go too far?

Quote:
Originally Posted by BillP
This always has been, and always will be an issue. In my opinion, there is no standard correct answer. Rather, the balance between mentor (e.g. adult) and student activities must be determined by each individual team, and be revisited each and every season. This balance will be determined by the capabilities of the students AND mentors with the ultimate goal being to provide the most beneficial experience for the students.

For our team, the mentors make every effort to stand back and act as advisers during every aspect of robot design and construction. Sometimes we do feel the need to step in to settle arguments, re-focus the direction of the design/build, and to remind the students of certain physical laws that may prevent their design ideas from working as anticipated (gravity comes to mind). There have also been times when the mentors will develop alternate design implementations and, working alone, build them, to demonstrate more options that we want the students to consider.

For all our efforts to stay in the background as much as possible, sometimes the students still feel that we are "doing too much". In these cases, we just grin and bear it. There have also been times when the students have asked us to do more. As I said, there is no formula to identify the correct balance.

I also think that, the only time this becomes a real problem is when the mentors define exactly what there role will be and that role eclipses the students participation in the design, build or competition. (as in the case mentioned in another post where the students were not even allowed to touch the robot in the pits). Unless this is what the students have requested (not likely), this is wrong.
It seems as if our teams work in a very similar fashion. I like the way our team is balanced now. Students come up with a strategy, then present designs to the team, and we vote on it. This is usually where the most bickering takes place. As for actual robot contruction, adult help really depends on the particular sub group of the team. For instance, our 4 speed transmissions were an iteration of team 33's shifter, and totally redesigned by 2 students. An adult threw in an idea to save some space, but all the actual design and contruction work was done by these 2 students. But, the arm team had 2 dedicated parents who were there almost every night helping machine parts and come up with design technicalities. As for other systems.. the wiring, programming, pneumatics, and end effector were all 100% student done, with no adult help.

One of my best memories from this build season was being able to walk in one day after school, and see about 10 kids all working together, without an advisor to tell them what to do, or how to do it. If we needed to figure out how to do or fix something, we went and researched the problem until we could find the answer. We were all able to work as a team, and get the job done. But at the same time, our team would be nowhere without the support and decication of our amazing advisors.

Before someone replies to this saying "oh, you're making teams who have engineer support look bad", remember this... My freshman year on the team we were sponsored by Johnson and Johnson. We had about 10 engineers who took the teams strategy and did 100% of the work on the robot. The build was boring and I didnt learn much. I fell in love with FIRST because of the competition. Now that sure inspired me... just not in the way it was meant to. I was inspired to stay on the team to go to more competitions and have fun, not to become an engineer. But without that initial inspiration, I would have never come back to find out that we had lost that sponsor, and now needed to do all of the work on the robot in our high school. 2004 was a rough year, but we got the job done. This year we improved by leaps and bounds. I have learned so much and now I know what I want to do with my life, engineering.

As for which is better.. for me I would like to see a 50/50 mix. While it is nice to say we built the entire robot, its brutal when something you've worked on for so long fails because of lack of time and knowledge. That is what I would like to see more of; also why I had the idea of the FPG. It would give every student the chance to create their very own work to share, but at the same time give every student a qualified engineer to fall back on when they are in a hole.

Last edited by Tom Bottiglieri : 04-04-2005 at 14:08.
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Unread 04-04-2005, 13:47
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Re: When do mentors go too far?

Quote:
Originally Posted by plutonium83
I had the same thought when I was at the Greater Toronto Regional and the Finger Lakes Regional. At GTR, I saw three collaborators that where all designed by a GM engineer. To my knowledge the students had no involvement with the development process. At FLR, I saw an adult scouting team and a lone adult working on a robot.

This level of adult involvement takes away from what FIRST is all about, the inspiration of students.
Wow.

Your attempt to be discreet failed miserably, since there weren't really many three team collaborations at the GTR regional.

You're talking about the NiagaraFIRST.org robots, and you're doing so with no knowledge of our teams. Did you actually talk to anyone on our teams and ask them about our design and build process? Do you think it's fair of you to make assumptions our teams, without taking the time to get the facts.

Here's how things worked for NiagaraFIRST.org this season.

The day after kickoff students and mentors convened at all three schools, and broke into small groups to breakdown the game, and begin the initial brainstorming process. Later on that evening all the groups met at General Motors, and each team presented their findings and ideas. A vote was held, and ideas were narrowed down.

From here the design process began. Different ideas were prototyped as the team worked to finalize a design. Both students and mentors were involved with this process. Once the design was finalized, many finer points were ironed out by our engineers. The students were involved in this process as well.

Most of the fabrication took place at Westlane SS, home of Team 1503. They have an amazing machine shop, with CNC facilities. This is where our frame rails, sprocket hubs and wheels were made. The students from all three teams were an integral part of this process, working with their shop teacher and a GM machinist.

All the robot parts were brought to Governor Simcoe SS, the home of Team 1114. This were most of the robot assembly occurred. Again, the students were the leaders of this process as well. Students from all three schools would work late into the night with GM engineers and other mentors to get the robots built.

I'd say the more than 50% of the wiring on our robot was done my the students as well.

The credo of NiagaraFIRST.org is "Inspiring Future Science & Technology Heroes". We will never claim that our robot is 100% student built. We do have a large degree of engineer involvement. We firmly believe in our process of having the students work with and learn from engineers and other adult mentors. But to say that "the students had no involvement with the development process" is insulting, offensive, and blatantly untrue.

Kevin, I welcome you to come to our pits in Atlanta, so you can see first hand what our team is all about.

---------------
Edit:

Here's a quote from one of my students on Team 1503, from our team's message board. This was in a thread started by one of our engineers asking the kids to describe their proudest moment of the season...

"My personal favourite moment was seeing the robot completed for the first time. Knowing how much of my blood, sweat, and tears went into that thing, I was glad to be done with it, but I was happier to see it fully functional knowing that Chris V, Evelyn, Khalid, Andy and I built the thing from scratch, I, and I'm sure everyone else, almost cried when we shipped it away."
__________________
:: Karthik Kanagasabapathy ::
"Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic and faithful and you will accomplish your object. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm" -- R.W. Emerson
My TEDx Talk - The Subtle Secrets of Success
Full disclosure: I work for IFI and VEX Robotics, and am the Chairman of the VEX Robotics and VEX IQ Game Design Committees
.

Last edited by Karthik : 04-04-2005 at 15:09.
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