I was reading through cd and I it made me think of something, does anyone else’s school do an FRC class? I live near New Orleans and our lead mentor teaches basic electricity and FRC 1-4. It is mostly a class for the core team to get stuff done but he does teach the basics to people who are not on the team.
But I guess the reason I’m making this is to see is this kind of normal or a rare thing to see at a school?
I wish.
I have never heard of this being offered anywhere near me, but I absolutely wish it was. A class like this would be incredibly useful!
Our school used to have a Robotics class that I believe was FRC specific but they don’t offer it anymore.
Our school has several robotics classes. At least in my freshman year, Robotics 1 covered FTC-style robotics (including building a REV EduKit bot), and Robotics 2 covered more FRC-style robotics (including building a West Coast Drive and wiring).
I think this is something that depends on how involved the teacher is with the FRC team, but FRC is a great way to introduce students to robotics.
We have a engineering class and a robotics class that our mentors teach and you can kinda just do stuff on the frc side if you on the good side of the teacher and on the team so kinda
Our school has offered robotics classes in a variety of ways. Unfortunately, our students are so academically competitive that the idea of taking a “regular elective” instead of an additional AP class or two simultaneous math classes isn’t an option, so none of our team members are interested.
Edit: For specifics, we’ve had:
Fellow New Orleans team here, it would be super cool if our school had an FRC class. We do have a robotics class, but it’s part of an LSU STEM pathway thing, and it doesn’t cover anything specific to FRC. Some of the concepts of the class can definitely be applied to FRC though, as it covers some basic concepts of robot design and teaches a lot about gear ratios and how to use them. It used VEX parts, and each unit would have us build new robots applying whatever we had learned in that unit. So, for example, after the first unit on gear ratios, we’d be assigned to build a robot to lift up something of a specific weight. We’d have to design the arm with a gear ratio with enough torque to lift the object, while still trying to keep as much speed as possible
I took the class after already doing FRC for a year, so I think FRC taught me more skills to use in that class than that class taught me to use in FRC, but for people interested in robotics outside of just FRC, it’s a good way to learn the basics.
we have multiple robotics and engineering classes but since our head mentor is also our teacher, I end up spending most of my time in those classes working on the robot or anything FRC related. I would say most of a robot is completed during school haha
Yes! I taught Mechatronics and Java programming and used FRC and FTC robots as a good chunk of my curriculum.
I have posted elsewhere on CD about Michigan Graded Credit vs General Credits, but anyone who is a participant of an FRC team can earn high school credits by working on badges (was based on the FIRST Badges created by 33 and other teams), attending competitions and meeting certain meeting attendance requirements. The badges system is semi-defunct but the requirements still exist to be found and used, just no digital tracking system or review team for levels 3 and 4 badges. It was a good enough start to count though!
We have a white paper here, although I should really move this to our real team site instead. This outlines the entire process we used to get this approved and included for everyone in the state back in 2019 (Looks like this was accomplished in 2017 as I look back further, but this was the process for getting a graded credit approved beyond the elective credit). Other states/school districts could follow suit using the work done here as a guide. This was a large project spearheaded by one of our team captains over two seasons between all the meetings with school admin, etc. It’s a long road, but it’s been traveled before!
When I stopped teaching unless we had another actual Teacher associated with the team it’s hard for us to offer graded assignments based on the badges. We offer the basic credit instead only on request. Any FIM teams who take the grant from MDE actually have agreed to also offer the regular credit and use a badge/curriculum system if requested as well. I don’t know how many FIM teams fully read through the documents from the state or not.
Be willing to offer elective high school credits for students who have successfully logged 60 hours, provided the team attends the minimum number of competitions.
Be willing to participate in a digital badging program established by the Robotics competitive program.
Our school has a capstone class for our FRC leadership team, and we have an engineering academy you have to apply to in order to take this class. If you’re in the academy the junior year engineering class is FTC based.
We have a class that end up having a large focus on FRC, but there are also other options in the class. The default option is to work on the FRC robot, but there are limitless options as long as you can justify what you’re doing. It ends up with some working on the robot, some coming to competition and some others staying home, but it introduces those who may not know otherwise to the world of FIRST.
I believe the tech school I go to used to have a robotics team as OCCRA and FRC is on the rubric for the engineering program, but is not offered or taught. Along with the 2006 OCCRA game manual I found in the storage room before leaving the class.
And my main school used to offer a robotics (VEX IQ) and Mechanical CADD class but no longer offers it as that teacher retired
Our school does an Intro to Robotics for freshmen to teach them basic digital electronics skills. It correlates nicely with the class but since our schools slow runs the program what ends up happening is that the freshmen use/lose our tools and we take up their learning space during the season. 
We’re trying to assimilate more with the CTE classes to take up the downstairs space, which has all our welding/electricity stuff in it.
our schools engineering dept offers Robotics 1/2/3 or 1/2/3/4 depending on interest. they use the current control system, but with spark minis and vex controllers with cims and window motors and pneumatics.
this is a problem that we run into as well, most of our few committed students fall in this group (including myself), and the ones who take the class are just so hard to convince them to commit to the team and show up regularly
Our class does a similar thing when its offseason, our mentor really loves animatronics so we make cool stuff like different tentacles, we have made a moving hand that was 3d printed, and right now we are working on making a (human like) full body animatronic named carmine.
I have a 1 hour block on M,T,Th,F that is dedicated to robotics. This has been very beneficial during build season as it has allowed more time to work on the robot during school hours. This is also a great benefit for my students who cannot attend every after school meeting due to sports or a job.
We’ve developed two FRC-based elective classes that teach students the basics of robotics in all areas, as well as letting them come to competition and work on our robot. They are taught by our advisors and mentors, as well as student leads, and are targeted towards prospective and rookie members.
Our team just recently got it last year, it has been phenomenal.
Our school has an engineering PLTW series, and we also started up an FTC class this year (with our school doing FTC for the first time ever !). From what I can tell having FRC/FTC as a class seems pretty rare ? As most teams I know of (including my own) have it as a club. I personally haven’t heard much on FRC classes but this thread has enlightened me.