In terms of meeting frequency and length, how often does your team or sub teams meet during the various parts of the year?
FRC Seasons:
Fall - Pre Season (September - December)
Winter - Build Season (January - February)
Spring - Competition Season (March - April)
Spring/Summer - Off Season (May - August)
I’m looking for number of days, how many hours each of the days and maybe some reasons as to why.
I’ll start off.
During the Fall we meet once every other week on average for about 3 hours, as we get closer to build season we move to once a week and eventually twice a week. During build season we meet 2 weeknights (3 hours) and then on Saturdays (8 hours). During Competition season we meet the same as Build season.
Then off season we have no consistent schedule I can point to. We are discussing this as a team this evening, but in my mind there isn’t a need to meet more than once every other week during that time unless we go to a scrimmage event or something special pops up.
Is meeting too much during the off season going to burn out the students and how difficult is it to get consistent attendance during the off season? In the past we have held workshops to only have 1 student show up and mentors refusing to do them again. Finally, how does your team ensure students will participate during the off-season?
Pre-Season (Fall): 2-3 days / week
Build Season (Winter): 4 days / week
Competition Season (Spring): 3 days / week
Off-Season (Summer): 1-3 days / week
I can’t speak to how it is under the current leadership of my alum team, but when I was a student, it was an evening meeting from 6:30 PM to 9:30 PM on every weekday and a Saturday meeting from 10 AM to 4 PM. During the off-season, we went to Monday evening meetings only. During the years I was mentoring, the build season schedule was changed to only meet on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday to avoid burnout and give us more room to add meetings if needed.
Build season: 2-3 days/week.
Off-season/Post-season: no in-person meetings besides demo events, fundraisers, etc
Fall-November: 1 day per week
Pre-season: 1 meeting to clean up workshop etc.
We didn’t meet at all in the past after our last competition, but this season I wanted to prepare for next season and work on improving our robot-building process and organizing the shop. I also noticed the students are super motivated to improve after competition, so I think its a good idea to take advantage of that. So now our schedule is as follows:
September - December: 3 times a week
January - April: 6 days a week
May - June: 3 days a week
We can’t meet during the summer so we must make up for it in post and pre-season. I’m definitely starting to feel the robotics fatigue setting in, so the summer will be a nice break.
Not every sub-team comes all of the time, but this has been our weekly schedule for the past few years. It’s a lot, but the kids enjoy the long hours. The long build and competition season schedules wouldn’t be possible without a mandatory rotation of parents to supervise every night aside from the normal rotation of mentors.
Pre-season – 2-3 days for 4 hrs
Build season – 5 days for 7 hrs + 2 days for 5 hrs
Competition season – 5 days for ~7 hrs + 2 days for ~10 hrs
Off season – 1-2 days for 3 hrs
We generally adhere to the same schedule throughout the offseason and the preseason - two 2 1/2 hour weeknight meetings and one 4 hour Saturday meeting every 2 weeks.
Build Season and Competition Season are significantly busier - 5 days a week, 4 of which are 3 hour weeknight meetings, and one of which is a 7 hour Saturday meeting. Individual subteams (especially the Drive Team) will often put in more hours on a week-by-week basis because of extra meetings requested by subteam Captains.
Pre-season – 2 days for 3 hours
Build season – 4 days for 3 hours and 2 days for 5 hours
Competition season – 4 days for 3 hours and 2 days for 5 hours
Off season – 1 day for 2 hours
I will note you’re only required to be at 80% of the meetings so instead of going to robotics 6 days a week (thus requiring my dad to leave work early every day to drop me off there) I go 4 days a week (though that’ll probably change when I can drive myself there)
During pre-season, we meet twice a week for 3hr. Our meetings are split between North and South schools, with Mondays at North and Thursdays at South. This setup makes it easy for anyone to attend a meeting and see if they like it.
During Build season we meet 5 times each week all at South where are space is, 3.5hr on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. 5hr on Friday, and 4hr on Saturday. And we have Wednesdays if we really need an extra meeting(aka the CNC miss cut the biggest plate on our robot twice(it was not the operators’ fault))
During comps season we have 3.5hr meetings Monday, Thursday, and Friday.
Post season (spring) we meet for 3hr on Monday and Thursday.
Summer we don’t meet unless we have a very specific project that needs the space. We do lots of smaller projects where we take hand tools home for the summer. We also do some online CAD training.
Pre-season: 2-4 meetings/week depending on invitationals or other school events. Usually one meeting will run from right after school (2:15) to 7:00, one will be from 5-7:30, and any others are need based.
Build season: meetings up to 6 days a week depending on need. Generally we meet 2 days a week from 2:15-9, the rest are 5-9. We also will meet on saturdays from 9-2. This runs through what would be competition season as well.
Off-season: 1-2 meetings/week, no meetings in July (school is fully closed) generally it’s from 5-8, but schedules vary based on what we need to work on. In may/june, we tend to meet less to give students ample study time for APs and finals. During the period where we aren’t meeting in July, we try to plan car washes or other fundraisers/events that we can do without access to our shop.
I know the build season probably seems like a lot, but we don’t enforce a minimum meeting requirement for students. All of our meetings are basically just “doors open, come and go as you please”. Sure we’ll get the occasional student to come to nearly every meeting for the entirety of them, but most students will either stay for the first 2 hours, or leave and then come back after finishing schoolwork. We’ve never had any major issues of students not showing up, there’s always someone there.
Fall and Spring Off-Seasons: 3/week, 2 hours/meeting after school
Summer (school not in session: 2/week, 2 hours/meeting
In-Season (Jan.-April): 5/week, 3 hours/meeting after school plus 4-6 hours on Saturdays
We don’t have mandatory attendance, so how often team members show up is up to them. Many are there for a lot of those hours, but we have to keep things flexible since many also have other commitments.
We meet in our school building so as long as our teacher head coach is here in school, we meet after school. (Or we have mentors come in to supervise)
Fall: Mon-Fri, 3-4 hours
Winter: Mon-Sat, 3-4 hours, 9 hours on Sat
Comp season: Mon-Sat (same as above), Sometimes Sunday (~6-7 hours)
Off Season: around 4 times a week (3-4 hours)
September through December 2 days a week 3:30 to 6:00. Although it depends on the project this year we were putting together our first swerve drive and redoing our pits so it was a little more.
Build season Monday through Friday 3:30 to 9:00 Saturday 10:00 to 4:00
Competition season pretty much the same as build season.
Summer we meet as needed for outreach events and off season competitions. Usually a few hours for a day or two prior to the event make sure everything’s working. Packing the trailer etc.
Pre Season: 4 days a week (Mon, Wed, Fri, Sat), 3:30 to 6 on weekdays, 8-4 on Sat
Build Season: 6-7 days a week (Sometimes Sunday), 3:30 to 6 on weekdays, 8-4 on weekends
Competition Season: 6-7 days a week, 3:30 to 6 on weekdays, 8-4 on weekends. If it’s the following week after a competition, there’s usually a break on Sunday-Tues
Off Season: Wednesday 3:30 to 6 during school days, with some showcases and other events, during the summer there’s a paid engineering and robotics software internship run by one of our mentors that members are free to join to design to practice, sharpen, and improve their skills.
Fall/Pre-season: 2 1-hour meetings (Monday and Wednesday) Total 2 hours/week.
Winter/Build Season: 4 2-hour meetings(Mon-Wed, Fri) and 1 8-Hour Saturday meeting, a total of 16 hours/week.
Spring/Competition Season: 4 2-hour meetings(Mon-Wed, Fri) with the potential for one of those to go to 3 hours if we’re very behind, and 1 8-Hour Saturday meeting, a total of ~16 hours/week.
Late Spring/Post-season: 2 Hours Monday, 1 hour Wednesday, and the occasional 8-hour Saturday meeting.
We’re hoping for longer meetings next year, as a good portion of our shorter meetings are spent unpacking all of the rolling carts from our shop, and then cleaning and putting them away, so we can get a lot more done with longer meeting times.
Just the standard PSA when this topic comes up: many teams/individuals put in a significant amount of time outside meetings (CAD, programming, scouting, ordering parts, planning meetings…). For some teams, it would be misleading to only consider scheduled in-person meetings.
I think that’s a really good point, I as a coach put in literally a part time jobs worth of time probably during some points and that’s outside of usual meeting hours. But that’s on an individual basis and that time isn’t scheduled by the team as an expectation for students to be considered “actively participating” enough to remain on the team.
Citrus Circuits for example has monthly reviews and attendance is part of that. If the expectation is X hours a week and they accomplish that outside of lab time because of their personal schedule I’d be okay with that.
I want to set what seems like fair expectations for our team and how light/heavy our schedule was in comparison. We are on the lighter side in all cases it seems like.