Welcome to a new update of the Team Rembrandts 2023 build thread!
First of all we hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and got to spend some time with their beloved ones! 
Today we will be informing you about the program for our first year team members. Every year Team Rembrandts recruits a group of new students from the highschools we are cooperating with. These students are 14/15 years old and for most of them this is their first introduction to the fields of STEM. To prepare them for buildseason in the best way possible, the team introduced Skills Class 1, SC1 for short.
Why did Team Rembrandts introduce Skills Class 1?
Until the 2019 season Team Rembrandts recruited a group of 16 engineering students from the University of Applied Science where the team was founded. For the first years this was a good way to develop the team, but it didn’t really match our vision and mission of inspiring young people to choose for a study/job within the fields of STEM since these students already choose an engineering study. Also, these students participated in Team Rembrandts as a project for their studies, meaning we were limited by the project requirements of the university. This also meant it was supposed to be their project and the highschool students weren’t as involved as we wanted them to be. Therefore, we decided to let go of that and mainly focus on the highschool students.
What is the goal of Skills Class 1?
For most students Team Rembrandts is their introduction to both engineering and FRC. That means we only have 13 weeks to get them ready for the tense, but also fun period the buildseason is. Up until last season SC1 was an introduction to all the departments within the team. This year we mainly focused on the buildseason itself and tried to simulate the first week of it. The main goals are to give the students the knowledge and confidence to participate and be hands-on during buildseason in a way they can get the most out of it and to learn working together as a team.
How did we approach Skills Class 1?
Each team evening started with a theoretical session which shouldn’t take longer than an hour. During the weeks we discussed the following subjects:
- Introduction to TR - Getting to know each other, annual planning, getting to know the team
- Introduction to FRC - Competition, game analysis and strategy
- Robots and subsystems - How is a FRC build up? Introduction to plug and play design
- Functions and requirements - Why do we make them and why are they important? Showed some examples.
- Robot design - Introduction to different materials, parts, etc.
- Manufacturing and assembly - How to use the materials and introduction to the workshop (machine safety)
- Electrical - Control electronics, motors, wiring and soldering
- Pneumatics - Introduction to the use of pneumatics and basic calculations
- Controls/software - Basic introduction to programming a robot
- Manufacturing and assembly - Work on prototypes
- Testing and validation - Testing and validating the prototypes with set requirements
- Introduction from our MarCom department - Introduction to our outreach program and simulating pittalks
- Buildseason preparation - Buildseason planning, approach, etc.
After each theoretical session, the students are working on a corresponding practical assignment within their project. The group was split up into two teams that were working on a simulation of either the 2017 or the 2019 game to gain some experience which will be useful during the real buildseason.
What were the results of this new Skills Class 1 approach?
We are yet to have an evaluation session, but from the talks we had with these students we got to learn that they are very enthusiastic about the layout of the program. They feel like the theoretical information they got will help them to understand several topics within the build season better and gave them a good indication of where their interests lie and what they would like to work on. The practical part really was a pilot and up until the part where they had to work hands on a project and physically build something, the students were well enough guided. After that there should have been some more guidance and we are looking forward to improving the program with all the feedback we got and will get.
Skills Class 1 during buildseason
During the buildseason we’d love to see the SC1 students explore themselves with everything the team has to offer. This might be working on the robot in a technical way, like mechanical design, manufacturing, electrical or software, strategy, but could also be being involved in our outreach or media & branding subdepartment. In previous seasons we’ve had some students who were afraid to ask things or who were scared that they would interfere with the work more experienced team members are doing. To tackle this and make sure the students get the most out of build season, we introduced a buddy system. Each SC1 student gets linked to an experienced team member who will be their buddy throughout the season. It is the buddy’s responsibility to make sure that the SC1 is always busy doing something they are interested in and spend their time as optimal as possible. The buddy will be the students first point of contact, but the overview of all SC1 students will be the appointed “master buddy’s” responsibility. This is the first year we introduce this buddy system, so we are really curious about the results.
Skills Class 2
Once the competition is over, we hope every student has their own vision of how to personally develop themselves. In contrast with SC1, SC2 is a program that the students can choose for themselves. Each (sub)department offers a program regarding their expertise and gives in-depth information about several subjects. For instance, the students will get familiar with the CAD program SolidWorks, more advanced programming, etc. For SC2 students this is the next step to more involvement and decision making. While guidance is less, SC2 students will also get a buddy during build season. However, since they have more experience, the department manager is responsible for this.
This post is written by: @Wesley4481 - Resources manager