Gee RedBarron, after your above post it appears that you can almost hear the crickets chirping. This has been a good discussion with some good open ideas. If it does continue I hope that it remains that way. A responsible exchange of ideas is always a good thing.
When my team started out in 03’ we were 100% student/parent built. But over the last 4 years we have been able to obtain more and more engineering help. Right now we have a solid group of 3-4 engineers and 3-4 college mentors who are really helping our team. Throughout this transition, I have been able to see the drastic impact that engineering mentors can have on a team. The level of efficiency and ability to get things ordered and accomplished has increased immensely with the addition of engineering mentor help. Plus, seeing someone who is actually in the engineering field getting really excited about the robotics program is really inspiring.
I guess, in conclusion…Yes, it is admirable to be 100% student built, but you are missing out on a large percent of what FIRST is about.
court
Good Discussion guys. (Even though it has been hashed out let the newer members hash it for awhile.)
I am glad for however you get your robot on the field and develop some skills along the way.
With our group we are about 75% student designed and about 80% built by students. We do this for one because we can and we have a collection of great mentors. I know that some teams don’t have mentors at their disposal so they make do with what they have. Our students value the education and experience the mentors have that they have yet to achieve. At that point they step back and observe how things are done by professionals. To have respect for the process you are in right now, respect the knowledge around you by using it to your full advantage. By having the engineers involved you bring in industry standards, project management, and fresh ideas.
Anyway, good luck however you go about this. See you all in a couple of weeks
I belive that adults should have some influence on the robots because they are older and wiser then some of our more… interesting students. And I’m not just saying that to be a suck up. But we are about 70%.
This year’s bot I am very proud to say was 100% built by students. Not one single part was sent out of our own student team member’s hands. I am also proud to say that this year’s design not only beats every other year’s designs in both strategy, functionality, and “simple complexity”, as I call it, but it was also pretty much built with basic hand tools, with the exception of a drill press.
Our team is 100% student, which I believe in. The main argument for mentor/engineer built is that the students will not learn any other way, but there are ways for kids to learn other than having someone else do the work for them. (Asking questions on this forum, for example)
Team 195 is completely student designed and mostly student built. The only thing that isn’t being done by students is welding.
I’d say our robot is more than 95% built by students, with the mentors making parts in order to show other students how to make parts, and the students then take over. Also, during the week we had finals, (and couldn’t work) our mentor made a couple parts for us, but they were things like bushings, not like our lift mechanism. The main components of the robot are completely student made, with mentors advising.
114 is 100% student built, with the exception of the CNCing. All parts which are CNCed are 100% student designed though.
Team 204 is 100% student run. We have our advisors who make sure nobody kills themselves 
but other than that, we find travel arrangements, hotels, food, metal, machining, driving to get parts, ect. We are very proud to be a very competative team with zero help from any professional engineers or machinists. We all feel that by building the robot ourselves, it will only benefit us in the long run. Instead of “watching” how to build a roboti, we jump right in and do everything ourselves.
I’ll answer these as I would have after my first season in FIRST, and as I feel now after a few years mentoring.
Then: Not much of a relationship. They sponsored us, but didn’t send any engineers, so we were really didn’t have an opportunity for mentoring anyway
Now: On my most recent team, it was about the same. Some of the sponsors were student’s parent’s employers, so the parents were there, but they would have been anyway. The other sponsors (school board) obviously couldn’t send anyone. Really, I’d call it about equal to my original high school team
Then: I probably would have said I was going to return, because in fact I did return to that team the very next year. I felt pretty guilty about every line of code I wrote or helped write outside of teaching C/C++.
Now: I still feel pretty guilty giving too much more detail beyond a general algorithm outline. I feel good teaching stuff they typically wouldn’t have learned in HS math or computer science courses, but I feel bad saying “alright, so this is exactly a method or algorithm that will work”.
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Then: Given a team that had any adult touch their robot at any point during build or competition, I would have thought they were, if not cheating, bending the rules of what was purportedly a high school competition.
Now: I mainly only dislike teams with pits full of adults, which is difficult to reconcile with my enjoyment of hanging out in the pit with the programming team begging to adjust code on the robot.
- Since my old HS team was primarily a fabrication-based team, the teachers view it as an extraordinary chance for the students to apply their manufacuring skills that they’ve been learning. Thus, there is little need for adult mentors seen, as all the senior students already know how to mill, lathe, drill press, and weld. Also, there was a strong view of the competition as a primarily high school competition, so teams with super-heavy mentor involvement were seen as bending rules. Plus, the students get a much better feeling of accomplishment after finishing a robot and knowing that they did it ALL.
So there are my answers to your survey. Right now I’m pretty fine with heavy mentor involvement, but primarily limited to teaching students how to use tools to get the job done. Whether those tools are lathes, hammers, algorithms, or math, that’s all good, just so long as the mentor isn’t the one implementing the code, fabricating the part, or designing the robot.
Team 1501’s stand has always been student lead and built. The mentors are there for help / teaching, and advice.
A good example of this would be our Monocoque deisgn / construction. If it wasn’t very Jerry Smyth taking us under his wing and showing us what it was all about, and the concepts of it, and then how to apply those, we would have never started that way. Now, Jerry is still there teaching the new students, but unlike the first year of 1501, there is now senior students teaching new students.
Students make decisions on there own. For example, we had several robot design conceptions. So a mentor jumped in and set why don’t you use a voting system like this to vote on the designs and the strengths and weaknesses of it.
FIRST should always be about taking a students interests and letting them go with it and do what they like to do (with limitations of course), and if they don’t know how to accomplish something there is always a mentor there to help.
Personally I like seeing students have fun and gain knowledge from other students or mentors that they will use for the rest of their lives. There just does not seem to be any point on being a member of a FIRST team if the mentors are going to build it or do all the work, because what does the student learn then.
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We are not sponsored by any professional engineering company’s, just local companies who are willing to help us out.
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After I graduate, if I do come back, I will not put a single nut or bolt on the robot. This is a highschool club and it will continue to be, I should not even do the slightest modification for the kids. Ill give them my suggestions and my input on the situation, but I wont touch the robot.
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I don’t look down on the teams that have engineers build their robots but I think that it is just unfair. There are some teams out there that have NO way of getting engineers to help them out so it is an unlevel playing field. I just dont see the point in having 20 students up in the stands while 10 grown men mess and fix the robot. Even though, I get great satisfaction when we blow out a team and 10 men run out onto the field yelling, picking up the robot and sprinting back to their pit with it.
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The reason we don’t let an adult touch our robot is because this is a HIGHSCHOOL club. If this was a community club, and any age could join, then I could understand, but this is for kids, in high school. I know that in the name, no where does it reflect that it is just for the kids, but are you really helping kids when you build a robot for them? When the kids grow up, dont you think one day they will be in the same situation again saying, man, wheres Mr. so and so, I dont know where to drill this.
Sorry if I came off to harsh, but this kind of thing really sets me off
You might be setting up a “false dichotomy” here. That is where you look at a situation in black and white terms, ignoring the (much more likely) middle ground.
I fully agree that having 10 adults in the pits working on the robot, and 20 students in the stands, is not a desirable situation. But I also feel that having 10 students in the pits, and one adult sitting there keeping quiet, is just as bad. Either way, there is no student-mentor interaction. How about aiming for the middle ground? Having one mentor working with perhaps 3 or 4 students at a time, discussing a robot problem, and thinking of and anylyzing ideas to fix it, can get a lot done on the robot. It also provides a valuable educational experience for both the students and the mentor.
This “either-or” mentality seems to me to be quite the opposite of what FIRST is all about. Those people who support mentor involvement with the robot design and build are not suggesting that students stay out of the process. We all know the students should be as involved with it as they can be. But students are still students, and might be wise to use the knowledge and experience of the mentors. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
FIRST is about partnerships and teamwork (as any team who has submitted a NASA grant knows). I love Woodie’s quote about the “robot being the campfire we gather around.” Mentoring is hard work, but can be one of the most meaningful experiences someone can have, for all parties involved. There is no blueprint for how to do a FIRST team, but it is always apparent by all these threads that there are a lot of mentors doing a heck of a job.
Maybe my definition is too broad but to me “100% student built” is not totally right unless the students are also doing all the fundraising, paperwork, shipping arrangements, travel, on and on. Which they are not. It takes a community to have a FIRST team, so be proud of what you have accomplished but recognize there are a lot of “non-students” who helped you get there.
Bingo
I am going to reply to this a second time because I believe my first post was misunderstood. I do not come from a team nor do I want to be on a team where the robot is engineer built. I believe that a engineer working with a group of 5-10 students where he/she is “HELPING” not “TAKING OVER” is o.k. When a student is stuck and cant figure it out, if the engineer goes over to help them than that is o.k. in my opinion, as long as they dont go over snatch the part up and put it on themselves. But if the engineer walks over and gives them advice or a description of how something goes on, then thats a lot better than if they were to sit there and say well I guess he/she will figure it out themselves or go on chief delphi and post a question while I sit here. Like I said before I believe that a student will learn far less by watching an engineer do the work, but I also believe that a student will learn more by working in a group of students that is working with an engineer.
To take it as far as calling it a community club if engineers are working with the students is just crazy. I see your point as far as a pit full of adults is concerned, but the whole point of FIRST is to spread the idea of going into a career of science and/or technology. Now if FIRST gave you the inspiration to realize that you could become an engineer, then I am glad that the way to give that inspiration back to the kids is to not even touch a bolt or nut on the robot that they are entering into the competition where everything is not level.Whether you are a team sponsored by a big time name like Delphi who gives you engineers and a healthy budget or a small business local welder who helped you in a bind with his/her expertise, the help is greatly appreciated. And if the team is a successful one in regards to the mission of FIRST then the students will go into a career where they can help level out the competition by providing their experience in the field they chose toward your problems/concerns/ideas towards your robot. I just do not see a feasible explanation as to why it would be a bad thing for an engineer to “HELP” (not take over the bot and build it to his/her taste) a team.
No…
We aren’t 100% student built. Not even 100% student assembled. Most of the assembly is done by students.
Let’s see. I like the way Cody Carey layed out rough percentages of stuff that is done by mentors and students.
100% of the design is done by students.
100% of CADing is done by students.
100% of prototyping is done by students.
~90% of assembly is done by students.
~70% of programming is done by students (simply because the software team is shorthanded, there comes a time when mentors do need to step in)
Almost all in-house machining is done by mentors (don’t really have the time to train kids to use the machines.)
We do have mentors look over designs to make sure they aren’t outrageous.
Mentors teach us calculations of certain things.
Mentors help us solve big problems when they show up.
Yeah, I can’t say we are 100% student built. Sometimes I’d like to say we are, and others I really wouldn’t. Yeah, this program is intended to teach the students, but why not let the mentors have some fun? They are giving up their personal time to do this after all.
nice perspective! 