Does robotics attract the right students?

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by Alex.q

I definitely agree with what has already been said. Additionally, imagine what your team would be like if everyone only wanted to work on the robot and nobody wanted to do the business related stuff. The team wouldn't have any sponsors, no media or marketing, no website...

You mentioned atcompetitions feeling bad that people were in the stands and only a handful of people were in the pits. What fun would the game be if nobody watched and cheered, and isn't scouting integral to success for top-tier teams? Additionally, from experience, it is unproductive and impratical for the entire team to stand around in your pit, there is just not enough space.

I'm not trying to berate you, just trying to point out it is important to have people who aren't totally focused on the robot. With that said, I would still branch out to FTC or find another way to make sure anyone who is interested in building/design/programming has a chance to do it. It would not be a good idea to force a student into doing business or media activities if they truly want to be designing or programming the robot.

You made me remember a very important point... One of the most celebrated individuals on our team last year never touched the robot. She spent 3 years organizing and expanding our scouting program, and that scouting program is a huge reason we've done as well as we have. it's enabled us to find the teams that compliment us, while not necessarily being the "best" teams at the competition.

Scouting takes more than writing numbers down on a piece of paper... it takes an intimate knowledge of the details of all the robots competing, and a broad understanding of all the technologies and approaches each team used. Without an understanding of engineering principles, you can't scout effectively.

Originally Posted by davidthefat

I do not mean "wrong" as in we are attracting bad kids, but we are attracting kids who already have a set goal of going into STEM. Aren't we trying to attract kids who are on the other end of the spectrum? My mentality was that majority of the kids on the team would have joined regardless of the mission as long as it had robots. I can confidently say majority of the students who are on robotics already had the vision to become engineers and scientists, or at least were entertaining the thought of it.

We are trying to get students into STEM, however we are also trying to teach the students who currently want to be engineers and scientists more than they would have learned without FIRST. Plus, it would be no fun to say "join our awesome robotics team, but only if you don't want to." IDK about your team(s), but for mine it's the people who already know they want to be an engineer or have been converted to becoming an engineer who go out and try to get the rest of the school interested.

What can we do to attract kids other than those who already have a goal in STEM? I know there are teams with dedicated business, and other non "build" departments within the team. However, is that really fulfilling FIRST's mission? I noticed many of the students end up doing something non build related. I am in no way trying to put the build team up on a pedestal, but I do notice it, like with many others have. Are we doing the job correctly if 80% of the team is in the stands cheering with a handful of people in the pits working on the robot? I have never been a "non build" team member; I have always been a programmer and on the drive team. It breaks my heart to see kids feel "disposable"; hell, I am the lead programmer and I feel that way sometimes.

I've seen this before. Heck, it's going on in my own team, and I feel the same way about it. It's not that the students don't already want to join, a lot of them just think they aren't the type of person for robotics, and then move on. You need to preach the ideas that: A) Robotics is a learning experience. You require no prior knowledge to join, an dew can guarantee that if you put your mind to it, you will become a first rate engineer on the team, and B) Robotics. is. fun. If there is any part of your team or the competition that isn't fun, then you are the one responsible for it, and it is your job to make it fun. If people on a team aren't having fun, then the team is doing something wring. FIRST makes these competitions the "hardest fun you will ever have". As for your view on the "disposable" student, your arguments with the students in the stands, and a few in the pits is how most competitions are. For us, we will only allow the key 10 people on our team in the pits. Everyone here can agree that the pits get full. Especially with a robot in there. BUT, the students in the stands have other important jobs. Scouting, cheering, all are important jobs the students in the stands have that make the team function.

Are we allocating the jobs correctly? I know, not everyone was made to be a Programmer, Welder, Electrician or anything, but with the ~100 students who signed up for the team makes me worried. I know that all 100 will not show up, but a big chunk will. There are simply not enough jobs for that many kids, and I worry that many of them will be turned away from STEM for that.

With us, we also had a lot of people sign up, and we are currently addressing the issues of our large numbers right now. IMO, there are 3 types of teams when regarding the amount of students on a team. There are those who have 5 or 6 students, who are desperately in need of more, since all of the work is put on the 5 or 6 students. There are those who have anywhere from 20 to 30, and work well on each thing they do without a problem, and then there are those who have 50+ students. Personally, I think anywhere above 40 students is WAY too much. You can only have so many people working on a robot at once, so many programmers, so many builders, and just the right amount of electrical, before you start getting people who don't have jobs. And sometimes, it's just the time of year you're in. In the fall, we get tons of new people who want to build robots, but when we start to prepare for off seasons, they realize that the robot is already built, and there is very little for them to do. In this case, you must stress to them that you will all be busy in the actual build season. If you are in build season with people who don't have jobs to do, then you have too many students.

Hope this helped!

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

I do not mean "wrong" as in we are attracting bad kids, but we are attracting kids who already have a set goal of going into STEM. Aren't we trying to attract kids who are on the other end of the spectrum? My mentality was that majority of the kids on the team would have joined regardless of the mission as long as it had robots. I can confidently say majority of the students who are on robotics already had the vision to become engineers and scientists, or at least were entertaining the thought of it.

While this is true to some degree, there are also many kids who join who were not planning on going into STEM... the problem is, you don't ask them ahead of time! I can tell you, without a doubt, that many of the kids we recruit for our team were not already set for STEM. In fact, one of our best graduates (majoring in Electrical Engineering), had been planning on studying business before she joined the team.

What can we do to attract kids other than those who already have a goal in STEM? I know there are teams with dedicated business, and other non "build" departments within the team. However, is that really fulfilling FIRST's mission? I noticed many of the students end up doing something non build related. I am in no way trying to put the build team up on a pedestal, but I do notice it, like with many others have. Are we doing the job correctly if 80% of the team is in the stands cheering with a handful of people in the pits working on the robot? I have never been a "non build" team member; I have always been a programmer and on the drive team. It breaks my heart to see kids feel "disposable"; hell, I am the lead programmer and I feel that way sometimes.

You can only fit so many people around the robot at once... if you have 100 kids, then yes, you need to spread out your jobs a little, and many of them may not touch the robot. But that's part of the beauty of FIRST - There's so much more for students to do than build a robot. You can have a team focused on animation, another focused on CAD, one focused on PR, one focused on fundraising, one focused on the website... in short, there's something there for everyone to do. And quite frankly, it really doesn't matter if you have someone on the team who doesn't want to work on the robot - if they spend all their time working on PR or managing the team's finances because that's what they like doing, then it helps to give them valuable experience that they'll use down the road.

We graduated 6 this past year, and all of them were profoundly impacted by what they did on the team - and some of them never worked on the robot! It was amazing to see them all considering majors that related to the areas of the team they worked with.

Are we allocating the jobs correctly? I know, not everyone was made to be a Programmer, Welder, Electrician or anything, but with the ~100 students who signed up for the team makes me worried. I know that all 100 will not show up, but a big chunk will. There are simply not enough jobs for that many kids, and I worry that many of them will be turned away from STEM for that.

If you don't have enough jobs for everyone, then it's time to expand your program. Go after all those awards that don't have to do with the robot. Dedicate two build teams and build yourself a practice bot. Spin off a "JV" team to participate in the Vex challenge. Dedicate someone on the team as a project manager, and his/her sole job would be to ensure that everyone has a meaningful job they enjoy.

What Eagle33199 said. Either make your program bigger, or make your amount of students smaller. As a quote from Karthik, "Always work within your means". It's pretty self explanatory, so I think you know what to do from here.

[trilogy2826]

Let's assume for the sake of discussion a hypothetical situation in which 100% of your students that signed up for the team (1 or 100, doesn't matter) already were unequivocally convinced that they wanted to be an engineer since the age of 5 and have already signed up for their college of choice by the time they joined the team. The fact in this situation is that even if you aren't "converting" non-STEM students into STEM junkies, you are providing them with an experience and education that they will not get elsewhere. At least once a week, I hear students on our team that are undeniably good at math and science comment about learning something new in the implementation of math and science. We have statistics from even our short 3 years in FRC that show that even the already STEM focused students benefited to some extent from our program. Basically, IMHO, in the end the mix of students isn't as important as spreading the word of FIRST and giving the student a unique experience.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

Are we doing the job correctly if 80% of the team is in the stands cheering with a handful of people in the pits working on the robot? ... It breaks my heart to see kids feel "disposable"; hell, I am the lead programmer and I feel that way sometimes.

..., but with the ~100 students who signed up for the team makes me worried. ... There are simply not enough jobs for that many kids, and I worry that many of them will be turned away from STEM for that.

My previous post was a bit vague. This one will get into specifics.

On a 5-person VEX Robotics Competition team, is is almost impossible for 80% of the team members to be anywhere other than driving/coaching, building, maintaining, scouting, and talking during every tournament. In fact, every person on a 5-person VRC team is likely to have at least two important responsibilities the day of the competitions, and leading up to them. That eliminates the both laments in the quote above.

The cost of a decent, first-year VRC team that attends a couple of tournaments (day trips) is around $1500 (less the 2nd year). Divide $1500 by 5 students and you get a great STEM Robotics experience (including as much right-brained and business activity for every team member as the team wants to take on) for $300 per student. The costs are substantially lower in nearly every year afterward.

Put 100 students into 20 VRC teams of 5 students each. Budget $1500 for each team. Total budget is $30,000 for a full, fine, 100-student season of iterative learning, competition, fund raising, business planning, project management, cheering, advertising, public speaking, mentoring, and ....

Add $3,000 to that $30,000, and those 100 students can host a great tournament to complement any others in your region, or can be the founders of a great regional activity. It will be affordable, accessible, sustainable, and valuable, and can steadily engage students 12 months out of 12, or for the entire school year (other programs, like FRC can be run as a 12-month program also, but with a different rhythm and with some extreme peaks and valleys that are both exhilarating and taxing/exhausting).

So, I don't know what your FRC team's budget is, but I'll bet that by blending a modest FRC program with broad participation in VRC or a similar program, your school will be able to ensure all students put their hands on a VEX robot, a pit display, a strategy, a team calendar, a budget and a set of talking points; and ensure that those students iteratively improve all of those items over the course of a each spread-out, multi-tournament season. Your school will then be able to use the FRC program and robot as the capstone project for a 100-student STEM army! . At that point, any perception that your school's STEM robotics program is a funnel through which only a few students "truly" pass, while the rest miss out; should melt away. Diversity creates strength.

Then, at FRC events, students who do the cheering or do the business model or do whatever, can be lending their best special talents to the FRC team, not making do with leftovers; and will in parallel be intimately involved in everything on their lower-cost (high return) VEX team. Even if some students aren't maintaining or building the FRC robot, I hope FRC tournaments won't the the time when they feel they miss-out on opportunities. Instead, FRC tournaments can become the time when they get to relax a bit and soak up all the fun of being a fan who knows the story behind the story, and can appreciate best efforts of all the teams. Who knows, they might even fan out and help some rookie teams or others who are struggling....

We (STEM Robotics participants) don't have to force fit every person or their contributions into one program. When we ask about "robotics" (see the title of this thread) we are being terribly myopic if we think robotics is a synonym for FRC, or only FIRST programs, or only BEST, or only VRC, or ... STEM robotics is a big topic and there are programs that are well-suited for almost any situation, including giving 100 students opportunities, choices and experiences well-suited to each of their needs and aspirations.

Blake