Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?

[Pat Roche]

I see things from both points of view that Andy started this thread from. When I first started doing FIRST I was on a small grass roots team. The team I was on has been struggling to find a company to give them a major sponsorship to help fund the team. The team remained competitive regardless of the lack of technical support they recieved from professionals. The team functioned with a teacher, a professional welder and the students. As the team grew in the next few years they were able to expand to recieve help from some of the parents who were engineers. The designs were still made by the students; they were simply assisted by the adults.The inspiration in all this comes from the guidance that was given to the students. The inspiration allowed for cleaner and better built machines.
The team still does not have an corporate sponsor with engineers but the students learn enough about theyre machine and with some guidance from the adults the still functions at a competitive level and the students learn alot about engineering, science and awhole lot more.

Moral of the story: A team does not need to have engineers to compete competitively but proper guidance from engineers is always a welcome contribution to a team.


-Pat

[mechanicalbrain]

Allot of people have thrown the word build around and used it in a variety of forms. I want to be clear here. Are we talking about building or designing? They are two very different things and i think shape you're posts into very different messages.

Overall i don't think mentor involvement should be viewed as a bad thing. I love mentors and think they do bring inspiration to FIRST. Its just i see mentors get over eager in their desire to help. Nothing is wrong with a robot that is student built (yes their are student built robots believe it or not) also their is nothing wrong with mentor built robots. I guess the only place i get rubbed wrong is when i see mentors designing the robot over the kids. And you cant tell me it doesn't happen. lots of us are guilty of wanting to promote our idea over somebody Else's. I'm not saying the robots need to be 100% student built. I just think that the robot should be representative of the students ideas.

Also this thread will stay alive longer if we don't directly refer to others post. your not going to change someones opinion by pointing out where you think they are wrong. People are untitled to their ideas and will get defensive about them. Respect peoples opinion even if you don't agree with it. This is a good thread and i would hate to see it fall apart into personal attacks.

[Steve W]

I am going to state a small lesson that I learned on my trip to Africa. I guess that it is a science lesson that can be applied to this topic.

I was told when I arrived that I needed to drink water. When I stated that I wasn't thirsty I was told that by the time you felt thirsty your body was already being stressed by lack of water. If however you had a consistent supply of water to your body then you would not get thirsty and your body wouldn't become stressed.

Take the above story and replace the water with engineers. A lot of the time we do not realize our needs until it's too late.

[sciguy125]

Originally Posted by Cory

This thread could go on for ten pages and I guarentee the only thing that will be agreed on is "to each their own"

That’s exactly what I wanted to bring up. I pointed it out before, but I feel that I need to reemphasize it. Each team has it’s own priorities. The way your team is run depends on these priorities. If you’re not sure what your team is all about, I suggest sitting everyone down in a meeting and trying to figure it out.

Everyone is arguing and showing why what they think might be “better”, but few are seeing that everyone has different perspectives. There are merits to more or less mentor involement, but each team has to chose which they want to take advantage of. One team may feel that winning at the expense of not giving students as much hands on experience is worth it. Another may feel that it doesn’t even matter if they make it to competition as long as the students got to do everything.

Originally Posted by Sanddrag

But the mentors already know everything. The point is not always to get the robot done fastest, it is for you students to learn something.

Originally Posted by GeorgeTheEng

Personally, I sometimes find mentors are too limited in thier decisions. Engineers tend to stick with "well, we know how to do this so we'll keep doing it this way". Students, esp when they come and go tend to bring creativity and different approaches that us old curmudgeon sometime lack.

I’ve found that inexperienced people are the most creative. They don’t have the background that they need to get the job done, so they have to make it up as they go along. If someone tells you how to crack open a walnut, you’ll keep using what they teach you. If you figure it out on your own, you may have a new, better method. If you want your students to learn and be creative, you might have to let them flop around and make mistakes. While throwing knowledge at newbies might be more efficient, it hinders creativity.

You could also see this the other way around. Fostering creativity might not be as important as completing the project in the allotted 6 weeks. They can still learn after everything is finished. Learning through observation has it merits. FIRST allows students to see how real world engineering works. If they don’t learn that much about the technical details right now, they’ll be going to college anyway.

Originally Posted by Alexander McGee

I think that the real problem here is everyone's definition of "performance". So what if the robot doesn't match up to the other ones? So what if there is something that was designed/built/engineered better than yours? Does this not inspire our students? Does it not make them want to do better the next year?

Just because a robot doesn’t perform that great doesn’t mean that people won’t learn or won’t be inspired. Our 2004 drivetrain was horrible (my apologies to Scott). In 2005, we analyzed it and figured out all the problems with it and fixed them in the new design. There were simple solutions to each problem individually, but it was decided that the drivetrain would be completely overhauled instead. Various ideas were borrowed from other teams (mostly the higher ranked ones). It worked better than we intended. A few parents pointed out that the evolution from the 2004 to the 2005 drivetrain was incredible. There are only a few minor issues with it that need to be worked out. Had the 2004 drivetrain worked reasonably well, it may have been decided to just tweak it. We would not have looked to other teams, and would not have learned some new techniques that were used in building/designing the new drivetrain.

Of course, some might feel that consistent “failure” would discourage people. Why would they keep coming back if they know they are going to fail? As the 2004 drivetrain started to show its wear and tear in its poor performance, a lot of team members started to get discouraged. I couldn’t believe how many people were just moping around despite the fact that we still had a decent chance. If these failures happen at inopportune times, people might start leaving.

Originally Posted by Adrienne E.

A reoccurring debate on our team has always been, if there are no high school students interested in doing a task (wiring, programming, chairmans, animation, or anything on the team) then what?

On 1351, if nobody wants to do it, it doesn’t get done. We’ve had to abandon a few projects because nobody wanted to do them. The people (students) that were qualified to do it were busy with other things and nobody else wanted to learn. It seems harsh, but it’s all about teamwork. Someone always steps up to take care of mission critical projects even if they don’t like it, because they know it needs to be done. Life isn’t always fair; if you want to help the team succeed, you might have to do something you don’t really want to.

However, by setting students up like this, they may shy away from engineering. If they have bad experiences about it before they go to college and get stuck with whatever degree they spent the last 4 years on, they might do something else. By doing the “dirty work” for them, they’ll be able to have the full experience because the team is able to advance. Instead of seeing the bad side of engineering, they’ll see the good side and hopefully stick with it.

Originally Posted by Steve W

A proper balance of mentors, engineers and students is one were they are all learning from each other, all being inspired and most important, that they are all having fun.

Originally Posted by techtiger1

The robots without mentors would be boring and the kids would have no one to look up to and no one to guide them in building it. I know that on 1251 without our engineering and various other mentors we would not be able to make our robots and things we deisgn a reality.

Originally Posted by Philip W.

Just because a robot is 100% student-built, doesn't mean mentors and engineers still can't help. We must remember that mentors should only be teaching. If mentors keep to teaching students the design process and how to use a machine and etc., and ensure the students are productive...

It seems that most people are sitting here. This is the safe spot. You get the best of both worlds. However, as I’ve been trying to point out, you don’t get to reap the full benefits of either extreme. If your team thinks that you need to be 100% student run, you get all the benefits that come with it. The same goes for a 100% mentor run team. If your team thinks that they can live in the middle, then so be it.

Just remember that you have to chose what is in your team’s best interests. If you haven’t done so aleady, get your team together and discuss what you want to get out of FIRST. Doing so will be good for more than just deciding on mentors, but also how you want to run your team in general. If your team has a direction and purpose, I think that you’ll be more successful. Success of course being defined however you want. Now go! Call everyone and set up a meeting.

Originally Posted by mechanicalbrain

Also this thread will stay alive longer if we don't directly refer to others post.

Oops, sorry. But I think I needed to in order to prove my point.

[Rickertsen2]

This is an interesting thread. I wish i had the time to write a lengthy response.

I am one of the founding mmmbers of an entirely student run team. We are not this way out of stubborness its just the way things have always been and we have never had any problem with it or seen the necessity for engineers. We are a competitive team and i do see that we are missing all that much. We have a number of extremely experienced/skilled students who mentor less experienced team members and we are our own self contained bundle of inspiration. We take great pride in knowing that our robot is 100% of our own design and craftsmanship.

[computer411]

I am part of a team that had no technical advisors for the first year. We completely designed and built OUR robot. We were proud of it and had no complaints and no regrets. We saw the competition as a learning experience, not Solely as a competition. I have found through my travels that the mentors are not just mentors. They help with the design, building, and troubleshooting of a robot. I saw one team whose robot had an electrical issue, and the mentors were the one fixing the robot, while the students were fooling around. I could say that that first year we were them ones fixing our robot when an error occurred, no matter what system it affected, in fact because we had designed our own system, the adults had no idea how to fix it. The FRC is a high school event, made to bring out new engineers and techs for today's world, not a place for ADULT engineers to duke out robots against each other.They are there only to help the teams out, not to completely design the robot which most of the time happens with a team that has technical advisors.

[KenWittlief]

Originally Posted by computer411

...They (engineers) are there only to help the teams out, not to completely design the robot which most of the time happens with a team that has technical advisors.

I think you need a little more exposure to the entire FIRST community, if this is your impression of what happens most of the time.

Over the years I have noticed that rookie teams often fall into a pattern where the sponsor and mentors think FIRST is a robot competition - they think they have to build a really spiffy and competitive robot so the higher-ups in the company will not be embarrassed to have the corporate name on it

very often rookie teams will end up with an all-mentor designed and built robot. Then they get to their first FIRST regional, meet other teams, talk to other students and mentors, and somewhere over the 3 days it clicks

and then they 'get it'.

Getting back to the rest of your post: sometimes in our human experience there are things that we dont know, and we also dont know that we dont know - there are many things that are only learned as we bump along through life, through experience, then over the years we understand what it was that happened.

and heres the thing: no matter how intelligent you are, you cant forsee these things - you can possibly anticipate them - they come out of nowhere - you dont know that you dont know about these things

thats one of the real values of mentorship. Throughout most of human history young people learned by apprenticeship, working side by side with someone who had years of experience and training.

[sanddrag]

There is definitely something to be said for the teams with students who know every in and out of their robot because they built it themselves. However, at the same time, I think they are cheating themselves out of the rewarding experience of working with real professionals.

[Chaos204]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

However, at the same time, I think they are cheating themselves out of the rewarding experience of working with real professionals.

There is also something that a student run team gets that heavily mentored teams will never have and will never understand.
I have been told, the best way to learn is to learn through mistakes.
the mentors that are active in the pits are depriving the students from the experience that is needed to be successful.

i will now make 2 killer analogies. Ready?

1. Besides Robotics my other life is what we call in our school sound and light(we are the people in the back of the theater balancing the Mic's and programing the lights) my "mentor" allows us (the students) to do the balancing of the Mic's so we develop the hearing that allows us to hear subtle rings in the voices before the audience does. This prepares us to be the mentors someday and be able to work without him guiding us every second.
which brings me to #2

2. When parents are raising a child or teachers teaching young students in preschool and kindergarten[or a councler at camp (in my case)] they allow the kids to explore their world and to figure out how to open doors and tie their shoes. If the teacher does not give them that freedom the child will become dependent on the teacher.

I hope you see the parallels.

Not only do engineer teams loose the trial/error aspect they most likely loose the pride i feel when i see our creation out there on the field.
everybody on the team knows how everything works and what it took to get it there in the first place. it's our "Blood Sweat and Tears" out there on the field.

I hope when we are done on this thread all teams will find a happy medium where the students do the building and have the mistakes that prepare them all while under the watchful and experienced mentor who wants the best learning experience for the students.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Originally Posted by Chaos204

I have been told, the best way to learn is to learn through mistakes.

1. Besides Robotics my other life is what we call in our school sound and light(we are the people in the back of the theater balancing the Mic's and programing the lights) my "mentor" allows us (the students) to do the balancing of the Mic's so we develop the hearing that allows us to hear subtle rings in the voices before the audience does. This prepares us to be the mentors someday and be able to work without him guiding us every second.
which brings me to #2


Not only do engineer teams loose the trial/error aspect they most likely loose the pride i feel when i see our creation out there on the field.
everybody on the team knows how everything works and what it took to get it there in the first place. it's our "Blood Sweat and Tears" out there on the field.

Jordan,
I have said my piece earlier in this thread but I had to jump in and give a little bit more.
The best way to learn is not through mistakes. It is far better ( and more efficient) to learn through other's mistakes and that's what mentors are doing. They are providing the benefit of their experience and passing it on to the students. If you were to exist just on trial and error without any benefit of past experience you could "wander around in the desert" forever and never come up with the solution. Man has made it this far by not reinventing the wheel every time a new idea comes into his head.
On the subject of mic mixing and feedback prevention, a mentor who lets you "do it yourself" so that you can hear the subtleties leading to feedback has fallen far short of a very complex discussion on the subject. Things that affect feedback are not only mix related but include the acoustics of the hall, mic selection, room equalization and a little thing known as NOM. There are spaces in existence that can never be corrected and there are mic that can be used in a great acoustic space that cannot be "mixed" to sound good or guarantee no feedback. As a student of this art for a very long time, I can tell you that I am still learning as are most of my peers, because sound science is still in it's infancy.
Finally, all teams take pride in their robot, but it is easy to become down heartened when you think you have done everything correctly and the robot still does not act or react as you think. Over the years, many teams without engineer mentors have asked for my help at competitions. They did have most of the problems solved but missed one or two minor points in design or implementation. Oh, if an engineer had just spent one or two hours with that team before competition, their experience could have been more positive. (for instance, when the FIRST tranny came out, it was very sensitive to friction caused by misalignment of gears and shafts) This advice did not need to come from an engineer, just someone with the experience to identify the problem.

[Chris Fultz]

Originally Posted by computer411

The FRC is a high school event, made to bring out new engineers and techs for today's world

From the FIRST website...

The FIRST Robotics Competition is an exciting, multinational competition that teams professionals and young people to solve an engineering design problem in an intense and competitive way.

The program is not intended to be a high school event. It is intended to be a partnership between students and adults.

I had a college professor that once said there are three kinds of knowledge -

What you know
What you know you don't know
and
What you don't know you don't know

I think teams trying to work with no mentoring are in that third category and don't know what benefit they would receive from a good technical mentor.

**

FIRST is a great representation of many technical companies. Just like the FIRST plan of an engineer mentoring a student, we would never hand a new engineer a clean sheet of paper and say 'go design a new compressor, I will be back in a few weeks'. We would have that new engineer work with an experienced design engineer and learn what to do and how to do it. Corporate knowledge is passed on and the knowledge base continues to grow and that is how technical advancements continue.

[Alexander McGee]

Originally Posted by Chris Fultz

From the FIRST website...

The FIRST Robotics Competition is an exciting, multinational competition that teams professionals and young people to solve an engineering design problem in an intense and competitive way.

The program is not intended to be a high school event. It is intended to be a partnership between students and adults.

I had a college professor that once said there are three kinds of knowledge -

What you know
What you know you don't know
and
What you don't know you don't know

I think teams trying to work with no mentoring are in that third category and don't know what benefit they would receive from a good technical mentor.

**

FIRST is a great representation of many technical companies. Just like the FIRST plan of an engineer mentoring a student, we would never hand a new engineer a clean sheet of paper and say 'go design a new compressor, I will be back in a few weeks'. We would have that new engineer work with an experienced design engineer and learn what to do and how to do it. Corporate knowledge is passed on and the knowledge base continues to grow and that is how technical advancements continue.

Chris, I agree with your post. However, there are other kinds of "Adult Mentors" besides technical ones. There have been many successful teams without engineers on board, and there are many many many people who mentor in this program who are not engineers. No team can be run without adults; high school students can not manage a team without credit and other things that adults take care of "behind the scenes".

I agree that engineers are a wonderful thing in this program, however, I personally feel that some of them do not know where to "draw the line" and let the students get involved. I speak from personal experience.

However, in the end, it doesn't really matter. I was able to be inspired from being on a team dominated by paid engineers, and my students are inspired on my team which has none. As it has been said countless times in this thread, please understand that teams run things differently for specific and very valid reasons. And, this is OK as long as the students are inspired.

I have a high respect for engineers in this program. Many of the people whom I work with would never be able to dedicate half the time that people like you do to this program. Thanks for keeping us inspired guys!

[phrontist]

The fact that thread is still raging speaks volumes. Obviously, there is a serious rift in the F.I.R.S.T. community. It seems (to me) to break down in to two real stances pragmatically, regardless of which of the (numerous) supporting rationales are being used:

1. It is acceptable and commendable for teams to feild a robot that is, in part or in whole, designed by non-student team members.
2. F.I.R.S.T. robots should be designed by students, with non-students in supporting roles that are not-directly involved in design.

Questions of manufacturing are a whole other debate (is buying sub-assembiles from AndyMark kosher?) and should remain seperate from this issue. In my view what it comes down to is the balance between "inspiration" and "recognition". So there are two questions here:

1. Does allowing engineers to design FIRST robots further the goal of inspiring students to pursue Math/Science/Engineering careers?
2. Does allowing engineers to design FIRST robots further the goal of recognizing student accomplishments in the engineering challenge that is FIRST?

I think the former question is debatable, students being corrected by engineers or observing the thought process of engineers as they engineer solutions to these (fairly easy) problems is arguably more or less inspiring then allowing students to do it alone (with engineers providing lessons at a higher level, or not at all). But I can see no argument in the latter question! How can you recognize students for the performance of a robot they were only paritally responsible for? It robs non-engineer teams of any sort of fair competition. How can I be expected to beat out a professional engineers robot (I still intend to, mind you )? Should a debatable vehicle for inspiration come at the price of recognition?

Working as an intern in what is now our primary sponsor has given me the chance to work closely with engineers, having my designs critiqued because I (as a mere high-school student) cannot be unsupervised in implementing production code. No doubt, this is a valuable experience. But working on my team, which has no engineering mentors, has been an equally valuable experience in an entirely different way. The team sinks or swims based on how well the students work together and know their stuff. I derive a great deal of pride whenever our team wins, because it really is us, the students, winning. Our (non-engineering) mentors are fantastic, plying us with sage wisdom and keeping us organized to some extent, but I'm glad it stops there. Our mentors are there to bounce ideas off of, not to dictate designs from on high.

Some have advocated that each team should be allowed to run things as they wish. I feel that sort of liberty should always be strived for. However the pro-engineer design teams limit the freedom of the opposing camp by altering the nature of the competition. You simply cannot have a fair competition of student wits with engineer designed robots on the feild. FIRST needs engineers, not engineer designed robots.

Originally Posted by Alexander McGee

The program is not intended to be a high school event. It is intended to be a partnership between students and adults.

It's the nature of that partnership that is all important, and to my knowledge, unspecified by FIRST. If it is, I'd love to hear it, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for change. FIRST is it's participants, and should change as the people change.

[Cuog]

In My Opinion a team should be run by the students. The students should begin the design and the Mentors job should be to keep the students on the right path and provide ideas/suggestions when the students dont know what they should do. I as a student dont like to see a team that has had no help from there mentors or has no mentors to ask for help. What also bothers me is when it is the mentors that do everything and the students only know from what the mentors have told them about the robot.

Our team is a small one(20 something students getting near 30 now) with only 2 real mentors, as well as some parents that help out when we need them. I like our team the way that it is larger teams cause each student to have less and less to do, as it is during build season we always have at least 2 people sitting and doing nothing at any particular point in time.

Well I've said my piece but feel free to think what you want,
Cuog

[Andy Baker]

Originally Posted by phrontist

Questions of manufacturing are a whole other debate (is buying sub-assembiles from AndyMark kosher?) and should remain seperate from this issue.

Keep in mind that "sub-assemblies from AndyMark" could be replaced with "screws from Fastenal", "wheels from MSC" or "car jacks from your local junkyard". Why single out AndyMark, Inc.?

Originally Posted by phrontist

I think the former question is debatable, students being corrected by engineers or observing the thought process of engineers as they engineer solutions to these (fairly easy) problems is arguably more or less inspiring then allowing students to do it alone (with engineers providing lessons at a higher level, or not at all). But I can see no argument in the latter question! How can you recognize students for the performance of a robot they were only paritally responsible for?

If all participating FIRST students were like you, Bjorn, then I would agree with your logic. You already "get" the fact that you need to further your education and you already know that you will end up in some sort of technical career when you enter the workplace. You probably score between 700 and 800 on the math portion of your SAT's. You have good work experience and are probably graduating high in your class. Colleges are lining up to recruit you to come study on their campus. Also, in order to build a competitive FIRST robot, you don't depend on any adult professionals. You really don't need FIRST to inspire you to become a technical whiz.

Believe it or not, many students are not like you. They actually need help to build a competitive robot. To many of them (and us adult mentors), this is a difficult design challenge. They need resources in fabrication, design, and team leadership. They don't have a dad who owns his own engineering firm. Some of these students don't even know what an engineer is. Their only heros are sports figures. For many, FIRST is introducing engineering to them for the first time. I estimate that most FIRST students fit into this category.

Originally Posted by phrontist

You simply cannot have a fair competition of student wits with engineer designed robots on the feild. FIRST needs engineers, not engineer designed robots.

It's the nature of that partnership that is all important, and to my knowledge, unspecified by FIRST. If it is, I'd love to hear it, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for change. FIRST is it's participants, and should change as the people change.

As quoted many time by the FIRST founders, FIRST is a partnership between students and adults. It is also defined here. The fact that you don't agree with this does not justify your demand that FIRST should change to meet your likes. This partnership and involvement from adult engineers is the foundation of FIRST. This is not a competition to only pit students' wits against each other. It never has been. If that is what you seek there are plenty of other great programs offered to satisfy your needs. I suggest you look into these programs instead of changing FIRST for your liking.


Andy B.