FIRST Teams in Decline Survey

#1

Hi all,

First of all, I’m fairly new here (I’ve only really used this forum to post pictures for TBA) so I apologize if “FIRST-Related Organizations” was not the appropriate tag for this. Anyways, I’m a member of a fledgling inter-robotics team alliance called the Urban Robotics League, and we were hoping to survey the users of CD about robotics teams that have called it quits or come close to doing so. Recently, a number of teams in our area have experienced declines in membership that have led some to temporarily retire. We’re hoping to get down to the root cause of this so that we can advocate for these teams and help them get back on their feet. For that reason, we created a brief survey (should take no more than 10 minutes) for members of teams that either a. have retired, b. are currently experiencing an unexpected decline in membership, or c. have experienced declines in membership in the past. It would be a great favor to us if those of you who meet those conditions could fill this survey** out for us!

*Don’t be deterred by the fact that it’s 6 pages - they’re short and you won’t have to fill all of them out.
**inb4 someone that took AP Psych comments about some sort of limitation of the research method: I’m well aware that Google Forms is not the most reliable way of carrying out a formal study and that some of this may be biased and whatever else. This is just an informal way of compiling anecdotes from teams that have experienced declines in membership.

Thank you!

1 Like
#2

I just responded for my team, but I’d like to give info about a team in my area that I worked closely with, and which declined and folded, if what you want is data about factors in the decline. Is that okay? Frankly I think their info is pertinent, and none of their members will ever see this post.

#3

That’s completely fine! Thank you for doing so!

#4

Will you publish your results? I’d love to read it!

#5

Of course!

2 Likes
#6

Will you be publishing the results on this forum?

#7

I’m not sure our experience is what you are looking to survey…we are hitting an expected roster decline. As a fifth year team that began with mostly freshpersons we graduated half the class last spring. And, as a team getting ready to move from an off site build to a new STEM center next year, we are not looking to have a mass recruiting class of inexperienced newbies. (That’s probably next year). But you might find our interim solution interesting.

TW

#8

will the publication include team numbers or no? I would be willing to put my team number in the forum if it is not published

#9

I might include geographic area in the results depending on whether a trend arises, but I’ll omit specific team numbers.

#10

Yes, although the time and format may depend on whether a robotics conference that our inter-team organization is planning happens.

#11

The Logo for URL looks VERY similar to that of the MEZ’s (https://mez.engin.umich.edu/).
Very interesting coincidence.

I filled out the survey for a former team of mine that had been experiencing difficulties before I joined the team.

#12

Boosting this one more time! I’ll post the results sometime in the next week!