Hi teams, how are you? I hope the construction season is going amazing.
As you know, the construction season started a few days ago. In my team we are about 40 people involved, but only about 15 people are very interested in the team and in helping to build the robot. The rest do not attend the workshop to help nor are they very interested in learning.
What are you doing or would you do in your team to solve this problem? I appreciate your answers
While I’ve never had a team greater than 25 students, the biggest thing we do to get more people involved is to make sure that whenever they do come to a meeting, they are doing something productive.
And when I say make sure they are doing something productive, I don’t mean give them a box of loose hardware and tell them to sort them. While yes that does have to get done, you’ll never get the member retention if that’s all members are seeing.
At some points in a season, I’m sure there are times where there’s barely enough work to keep five people busy, let alone 40. In situations like that, what I generally try to do is split up the work between the most experienced members, and then have them lead smaller groups of less experienced members through whatever needs to get done. Yes, things might take longer than if it was just the one person doing it, but it keeps more people engaged.
I’ve seen my fair share of students who come to meetings, sit on their phones for half of the time, and then leave. They may not have the ambition to ask for something to do, or maybe they are intimidated. The easiest thing you can do is just ask them “Hey, can you help with this?” or “Can you give them a hand with that?” If they say yes, great. That gets their foot in the door and gives them a taste of what they could be doing if they participated more. If they say no, then there’s really not much more you can do. It’s their loss for not wanting to be involved, and it’s not on you to force them to do something they’re not interested in.
Great answer, thank you so so much. I will talk to my team and let them know about this.
I’d have that group of of 25 less involved students build the FirstBot or at least the shooter structure of it… above is the video of it to show said 25 students, and here are the step by step instructions I recommend printing them.
One of the age old questions… some students might be more interested in the strategy/scouting, marketing/social media, business/fundraising aspects of the team.
1st year students can take a while to open up, and can be scared of the upperclassmen… I was a bit shy talking to all my sisters senior friends at first.
Then there is the fact that most of the 15 very interested have probably been on the team for a few years and have been to tons of events (my favorite part of season) going to an offseason(s) at the end of this year will be a great chance to give both the less involved students and the students who joined after your last event a great chance to drive the robot at an event and fall in love with the program.
It could be a matter of they need a mentor or uperclassmen to give them an assignment / take them under your wing, a great one we have done for the past few years is have the new students wire up a kit bot… not only does it build up their skills but it then helps with drive practice ect
Our team is similar in size to yours and we also have about 15 kids who are deeply interested in building the robot. And that is perfectly fine, because we have many ways for kids to participate. In addition to the subteams designing/building/programming the robot, we also have subteams for awards submission, fundraising, outreach, graphics/website, scouting, etc. All of these make valuable contributions to our team. So if you have a kid that wants to write your newsletter, or take photos and videos, or do your social media, or a hundred other tasks, let them do that.
Thank you so much, we will follow your advice!
Thank you so much, we will apply that!
Our current team is smaller, but at peak we had around 40. Same issues, and we solved it with FIRST badges, field crew and having the KitBot drive train for them to work on in addition to the real robot.
First badges: These can be semi-self paced but give the students without ambition a path to follow to learn the basics to be helpful. It’s not a step by step guide fill of contents, but instead a list fo requirements of what they should be capable of proving they know how to do. If they can do all of the stuff on those lists they can be useful. Once they start to get their hands involved maybe it’ll flip that switch and they will want to do more.
Field Crew: we have to move and partially disassemble some of the field props some years to get them to fit through doors and storinh them after meetings. We also have a field carpet that gets taped and patched. These students could be out at the practice field all day “monitoring the field” (being on their phones between practice runs), helping drive team where needed and being responsible for the field prop assembly earlier in the season. If the extra bodies could just manage that it gives them something productive but where there is plenty of time to sit and chat.
I strive for 2 things.
People join robotics club because robots are fun. Try to get some robot moving every time you meet. Or at least some prototype structure shooting notes. Get some motors running adds fun to the work side of the time.
And organize the work so everyone has something meaningful to do. Their own piece of the puzzle to the season’s success that they can own and is valued by the team. This tends to be harder to get the area leads to plan in advance, delegate, and think like a leader.
Thank you very much for your advice. Sincerely it is an excellent idea, I will discuss it with the coaches to be able to apply it.
I hadn’t thought of it that way. We will apply it more to get more members interested in learning!
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