I loved being involved with my team in high school and enjoyed the “culture” that we had, but after I graduated and had time to mature I realized that the program is “More than Robots”.
The culture of my team was only robot 24/7 which while being a student I was totally ok with because that’s why I was there. Looking back at the program I now see that it can be so much more to students. From outreach experiences and teaching younger generations to leadership opportunities and career lessons. I have been working to try and create a new culture for the team that matches this idea. I obviously don’t want to take away from the focus on the robot because that is still important to our team, but I can’t find ways to increase community involvement and have students take up leadership positions.
We have a few outreach programs that we have started in the past few years, but the main issue we run into is getting students to volunteer. We were at the point where several mentors were debating dropping the projects because there was such little student involvment. This year however our team required each student to meet a number of service hours to attend our competitions. This did solve the problem with volunteering or at least for a bit because after all hours were met students would stop helping and we were back to where we started. Even when students need to meet their hours we still struggled to get involvement from a majority of the team. I hate that the only way to get volunteers is to make it required (not really volunteering) and some other mentors disagreed with the idea of required service hours.
Of course, we have a few students that are always willing to help but that is only a very small portion of the team. I feel that it’s difficult to run an outreach program with the same ~5-7 students actually being involved.
I understand it will take time to change a team culture, but it feels hopeless in its current state to try and change it. If anyone has any ideas about how to increase student involvement in outreach or create a leadership structure please let me know what it is your team does.
We’ve required outreach hours to attend competition for the past few years (minus 2021, obviously). It’s tricky because the amount of hours we can reasonably require depends on how many programs & events we can set up, which depends on things outside our control (like community partners ghosting us). Every year we set a requirement, and end up reducing it somewhat when we get closer to competition, which is not ideal. But it’s still been reasonably effective - almost everyone did at least 6 hours this year, a few did 20-25, and most did somewhere in the 10-15 range.
One thing that would help is to have students setting up the programs and events, not mentors. And to have a student outreach captain, if you don’t already. We talk to our students throughout the year about their moral obligation to give back - the mentors donate vast amounts of our own free time because when we were younger, others invested in us in similar ways. Our team is completely free to join and provides significant travel scholarships, and all we ask in return is that they 1) put in the effort to complete the robot, and 2) pay it forward in the community. We also talk about building a habit of service - doing outreach now, at their age, makes it a more natural part of their lives as they grow older, and that’s something we hope they’ll take away from their time on the team.
Not all our students buy into that stuff, but enough of them do. We typically have a strong outreach captain and several others who take it upon themselves to organize outreach events. The outreach captain is responsible for making sure people understand the outreach requirements and sign up for events, and students generally seem more amenable to that when it’s coming from a peer than when it’s set up by a mentor.
We also did some reflection & goal-setting during the virtual year, and made a five-year outreach plan that the students are excited about (making STEM education more accessible in our community by setting up a certain number of new FLL teams etc). This has helped the students feel like they’re working towards a bigger goal and actually making a difference, not just doing a random collection of misc community service.
When I was a student I had no problem with robots 24/7. Now as mentor I know the program could be much more and want to change the culture to reflect that.
I think this partially comes down to the types of students you recruit for the team.
Some teams recruit for “the robotics team” and you end up with a bunch of students who show up to build a robot.
If you build a school team or “company” or outreach team who happens to build a robot as one of its many annual projects, you may start attracting students interested in participating and leading in those other facets of the team. Of course, you will still get the students interested in building robots but with a stronger team backing in other projects, you will likely get their participation as well.
I think a lot of this should come down to a team discussion about the culture and what activities the team as a whole feels adds value to their experience. While I understand that community outreach benefits the team and is critical to sustainability, unless I’m good at explaining that to students and explaining the value, I won’t be surprised if they don’t share the same goals regarding outreach.
The team should lay out their priorities. If mentors and students who are interested in doing that kind of work explain to the rest of the team the importance of outreach events, and kids still don’t really feel like doing it, then you kind of have to accept that, no?
Its important to get everyone on the team (most importantly leadership both student and mentor) and communicate to them what it is you are aiming to push the team towards. I suggest taking baby steps and not trying to push it super hard. I’ve had experience trying to change culture and pushed a little too hard and got less than satisfactory results. Starting small can lead to a slow but sure change in mindset. The most important part of advocating for changes is maintaining a positive attitude regardless of the outcome and continuing to push incrimental changes. Some smaller ways I’ve tried to improve culture is to encourage open dialogue about what it is you want, and as far as outreach goes making some of the more dedicated students as outreach leads for individual events and having them tell their peers the importance of outreach and what they will get out of it can help to change the culture. I can not emphasize enough how important it is to keep an open dialogue w the fellow mentors and students to make sure you arent overstepping in their eyes.
I feel like im rambling a bit please let me know if this is any help at all
Also if you need more specific ideas about smaller outreach endeavors I’m happy to help just shoot me a PM
For us, one of the keys was finding outreach activities the students actually want to do and bonus points if it directly raises funds for the team.
VEX/Lego camps for middle schoolers are great. Your high school students get to build robots with Lego’s and play with middle schoolers, talk about fun!
Does your team have a mission statement and core values? It’s not trivial to create them (the whole team needs to be involved, and it’ll take a significant amount of time), but once you have them and have buy-in on them from everyone, it’s a lot easier to target your team activities and build your culture around them. Don’t do outreach activities just for the sake of doing outreach - there needs to be a purpose behind them that everyone can understand and get behind.
For example, my team’s mission statement is “To inspire girls of all ages to incorporate STEM into their lives and to revolutionize the perception of women in STEM”. This incorporates building the robot and competing - by showing up, competing, and doing well, we act as role models and examples. It also incorporates many of our outreach activities and partnerships - Girl Scout troops, Target Women in Science and Technology, a local Girls, Science and Technology day, SWE, etc. We don’t just show up to do outreach, we show up to accomplish our mission.
I’m a senior on my team, so keep in mind my experience is only from the student perspective. Our team is extremely outreach focused, and we don’t have a requirement. In my opinion the best way to make students want to do your outreach projects is to make it an integral part of the team. Just to give an example, this year we had 10 freshman join, and the majority of them did some form of outreach before even touching the robot. I think that this caused people to see it as apart of our team identity. Many people disagree with me on this, but I personally feel that outreach comes before the robot, and I think doing more of it will make newer members see it as more important. Also making students the leader of different programs may help to make it more of a student run program than a team one. Some of the outreach on our team is almost entirely student initiated, which I personally think helps to get people to volunteer.
As I said I’m still a student so my perspective isn’t the same as yours, this is just from my own experience.
Our team also has student outreach leaders, the only difference being we have students in charge of individual projects rather than one student in charge of outreach as a whole. Its an amazing idea and I personally think it works really well.
