Hello, Chief Delphi. For one of our meetings, I’m in charge of doing mock scouting (since I’m the lead scout). Obviously, I’m going to talk about how our team does scouting, as well as the benefits of it.
But everyone knows how tedious scouting is, so how do you propose to make scouting more fun? One of my ideas is that for anybody who scouts, they get a piece of candy.
Any thoughts on the matter?
Scouting is not meant to be fun but teams like 1114 makes it lie abetting game were they bet like if a team will be over/under 40kpa or 5 gears. they use a pretend currency that they give prizes to the most of the currency at the end of the day.
One word: Gamification
(yes it is a real word)
I wonder if anyone’s tried to do Fantasy FIRST style scouting at an event. Scouters draft their “teams” before the event. Then those scouters are responsible for collecting the data on each of their teams. At the end of the event, scores are tallied and the winning Scouter gets a prize.
And for mock scouting, you can have your scouting team try this for an event that had a particularly good webcast. (Some years may be harder than others.) The drafting would be kinda weird since everyone would already have the results. But even so, have the scouters watch webcasts and record points and whatever data metrics your team deems important. Then, each scouter only accrues points for recorded actions. That will motivate the scouters to actually pay attention. The lead scouter and/or scouting mentor can validate and verify the data the scouters record, and hopefully you can get some good data.
That’s a good question. To be honest, our team hasn’t had the usual “dread” of scouting like it used to. In 2017, we had no complaints (at least that I’ve heard) from any of the people scouting. There were complaints when we had to have people in the pits fill in for a missing person, but all the team members who weren’t designated to another task were happy.
This is probably because of a few things-
1.) Candy rewards. We didn’t just give incentives to scout- we just handed each team member a huge bag of candy to pick out of before each match and they had that to entertain them.
2.) We had short scouting sessions. We had a schedule that made use of everyone on the team (Including pit people while they were off) so that nobody was out for too long. Each person usually had 2-4 :30-1:00 shifts. This meant that they had at least 3 hour breaks in between sessions.
3.) Our team had a lot more people to do this this year, but we made everyone scout in pairs. There were two students watching the field, with one entering and gathering data, and the other just watching. This way they had to verify with each-other what the data was before it got entered. This meant that they also had friends to work with, so they were comfortable sitting next to each-other, and could mess around and chat between matches, since it always takes so long to transition lol.
4.) Scouters should feel like they are really important on the team. We let scouters know that their job was really important, and stressed the idea of coming to the scouting meetings that we held during competitions. We could show the scouters the database and how robots were comparing, and they could see the fruits of their work, which made them feel a lot more open to scouting.
So, maybe try some of these strategies for your team!
(P.S.: I am scout captain on my team, so these observations are just from my experience.)
A lot of these ideas are good, but some of them don’t work with smaller teams. If you only have, say, 4-8 students in the stands at a given time, scouting can be a little tough.
I try to keep transparency in what exactly we are scouting for. By letting the students know (or even better, guiding them to figure it out on their own) which robot elements best compliment our game play, they can choose which robots to scout each match. Yes, this means losing out on some valuable data but if you can’t collect it in the first place, I don’t see the point.
EDIT: I find this helps keep people interested, at least for a while, because they are choosing who to watch and what to watch for. This added bit of autonomy makes it an active-participation event instead of just being handed a book and writing tally marks and can help scouts become more involved in their work. With a little guidance, a lead scout can compile the information needed to make a fairly decent pick-list.
I’ve found that keeping scouting relevant the entire event really helps. A lot of teams collect scouting data just to use for alliance selection, which can be dull and tedious. So while doing that, have each of your scouts assigned to a specific match your team is going to be playing in. It’ll be their job to become experts on all of the robots in that match, and communicate that information to the drive team in order to help determine the best strategy for your alliance. It’s a bit of a closer goal, and helps those in the stands feel like they’re directly contributing to the on-field success.
All your ideas are great, thank you so much! I am scouting captain, so it was very educational to see what other teams did for scouting. Again, thanks!
I’m a little confused. Is your question about how to make a mock scouting session more fun as an off season activity in your shop or how to make event scouting more fun?
If its event related, are you having trouble keeping scouts interested while still getting good data or are you stuck with low interest and bad data?
I was going for more off-season. We had an influx of new members so we need to teach them what scouting is, since it is so important. I did get ideas from both sides though, which I greatly appreciate!
Scouting starts with a strategy of how the entire team will execute at an event - from robot on the field, to fixing the robot, to eating lunch, and even supporting CA.
The scouting lead has to believe in the strategy, and be passionate about its execution. For example, he or she shouldn’t mind staying up the night before elims to find that one robot who can bring some magic to the alliance as a 2nd pick. That could be a student, or it could be a mentor. Ideally it’s someone who others want to rally around.
If that person doesn’t exist, it’s extremely difficult to gamify the role or otherwise motivate a team to gather reliable data.
Small teams should make friends to scout with and share data. It’s not always easy, but it’s definitely easier if there’s someone who is enthusiastic about it.
The keys are:
We like to “grade” scouting reports and give feedback to the scouters. We’ve noticed that students generally improve when given constructive criticism. If you’re going to say “Don’t do this”, you also have to say “Do this instead”.
After each event, whoever turns in the most solid performance scouting-wise gets a gift card to Dunkin Donuts.
Candy is good, as well as fostering conversation that is fun and engages everyone so people enjoy being in the stands together. I think some of the best times I had at an FRC event occurred in the stands watching matches or during scouting breaks with my teammates.
My advice would be try to organize the process so it gives everyone a break, but use that break to their benefit. Ask questions in between matches about who they thought did well or what a strength of each team was. Try to hone in connecting what they are observing to the mechanisms they are using. From there you can encourage them to walk the pits and checkout those machines closer. Maybe setup a buddy system with a few members on the team who can go with them to checkout what makes team 9999 move sideways or how 8888 is so efficient at placing gears or why is there a clicking sound coming from 7777 when they climb?
Scouting is really dynamic in that there is a data collection part but also a mechanical side of being able to teach kids about mechanisms through how they perform on the field. Its a great training system by seeing a variety of mechanisms in action up close and on the field to expand horizons in design beyond explaining what an H drive is compared to a tank drive, how it is built, and what it looks like. As a mentor, it is encouraging to see our students move from focusing on pure data to connecting what they are seeing from the mechanisms being used and further relating them back to our strategies and how we can create an effective strategy together.
Overall I would encourage less focus on raw data and instead highlight the why through engaging scouts to explain what they are seeing, who played well, who has what to offer, etc.