Large amount of team members.

FIRST General Forum
1

Hello there FIRST community :slight_smile:
Recently, our team, that traditionally had 30-40 members, has faced a new problem: 40 new students signed up to our team, which makes us a team of 70 students.
Our team never had any process of deciding which students can join our team and which can’t, because of the fact that we believe that everyone who wants to join FIRST should have the opportunity to do so.
What do you guys do in your teams? Do you sort the students or do you have a team structure which is capable of having this amount of students?

2

Last year we had 75 members. We let them all in. It was a bit hard to keep organized, but we managed. The number of members went down to roughly 40 during build season, and by the end of the season it was about 25.

3

How many mentors do you have? If you have enough subteams, enough mentors, enough space, and enough tasks and projects for students to work on, you can manage.

Avoid shifting the “leftovers” to a subteam they aren’t interested in to meet ideal subteam sizes, as this will likely make for an unmotivated and ineffective subteam.

4

Hmm… I feel like I’ve seen this topic recently.

5

Goodness - The answers to the OP’s question are sooo easy. :smiley:

Form two FRC teams, if you are thinking FRC is the only option.

Form many FTC teams if you are thinking FIRST is the only option.

Form many VRC & FTC (& BEST, & SEA Perch, & …) teams if you are thinking that maybe there is more than one form of student-robotics program that is valuable, and if you are thinking that because the programs have different costs, different annual rhythms, different competition seasons, different classroom/teaching materials, etc. that students’ diverse needs are best satisfied by a spectrum of programs.

If there are enough VRC/FTC teams in your area, form a local league.

In the many, many STEM programs (not just robotics and not just FIRST) that exist; many include software/CAD/Animation sorts of challenges. Form teams for those.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Maybe the tough part is finding adults to help the students organize themselves into productive teams and/or to help the students bootstrap themselves into learning/applying the necessary skills. I suggest putting that squarely onto the parents’ shoulders once any taxpayer-funded resources are fully committed. These programs do not have to be school-run programs. Hopefully in the future school-based programs will be outnumbered by community-run programs (think of sports leagues, Scouting, etc.).

Another piece of the puzzle is finding money. A VRC or FTC season does cost more than 99 cents per team, but the costs per student are comparable to a season or two of most sports programs. And… students can learn just as much on those teams as they can on FRC teams, if they care to. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that FRC is “best”.

So, other than being a bit overwhelmed initially, I think you have a great opportunity to realize the vision FIRST, VRC, and the other programs have. That vision isn’t one FRC team tied inextricably to one school. It’s many teams that match the many needs and resources of a community, and reach many, many students in that community (in addition to a strong, diverse STEM program within each school).

PS: Be sure to brag to your bosses and local politicians that you, your school, and their community are being wildly successful training a new generation of taxpayers. Voters and politicians alike, like to hear that sort of news.

6

Good luck.

Before the 2011 FRC season, 2220 had almost precisely the same thing happen-- and then continue happening until now. Explosive growth is a marvelous thing.

In my experience, the number one thing that keeps momentum going on growth is keeping everybody busy. Offseason projects, a second robot, lots of different prototypes, focusing on training and CAD, and capitalizing on individual students’ interests are all things that feed into that. If you use your excess human resources wisely, you can get more sponsors, start a lot of FLL, FTC, or VRC teams in your area, and raise awareness for FIRST and STEM programs massively.

Brainstorm different activities and projects that your team can do to keep people busy. Think about the size you want your build team to be, think about whether you want to build two robots, split up what might have been a “robot manufacture” group into “drive train,” “manipulator,” and “electrical” groups, etc. Figure out what all your new people (and current people) are interested in doing, and then reevaluate-- an excess of electrical might mean exploring doing some fancy lights on the competition robot, or focusing on making very neat wiring this year.

Team 2220 ended up iterating through a series of stuctures-- in 2012, we tried having a bunch of internally competitive groups working on our manipulator. This was not particularly effective and resulted in a lot of friction, so we had to emphasize logical prototyping and CAD in order to keep everyone interested and functional. We also started focusing on tight project management-- when you have so many people, there are no excuses for not meeting your deadlines. We also now do a lot of off-season engineering competitions (internally), and funnel new students in 7-10th grade into our FTC program, which has grown from 1 team in 2012 to 16 this season.

If you have any questions about that, feel free to PM me and I’ll put you in touch with some of the mentors on the team (they have a bit of a different perspective; I was a student during that time).

Again, good luck. A large program is both a gift and a curse.

7

Hm. We also had 45 new members sign up this year, but since we already have 60, we’re kinda used to it. Lotsa mentors helps.

We have mandatory service hours before build season, I think it’s 20 if you want to stay on the team. These include shop cleanup, carwash, parades, community outreach and other activities.

8

My team had 20-ish people apply this year, and we’re already a team of 30. We try to keep our team size around 40-45, which is a manageable size for traveling and fits our lab size.

As such, we had to cut 5-10 people.

Basically, we try to put almost all of the Grade 9’s (Freshmen??) and older members on the team as a tryout to see how they do from the fall-winter pre-season, and then make cuts based on how much dedication they showed during that time.

9

I’m interested to know how you execute that. How do you tell the students they have been cut? How do they usually take being cut from a team after putting in work in the pre-season? Do they often return to the team?

10

From my experience as a student, there were very few “grey areas” in terms of student participation, with the cut students not participating or showing interest and the ones who made it show a genuine interest in the team. This means that there are very few students who put in the time and work in the pre-season that get cut.

Our school has a technologies program, that includes robotics, that all of the Grade 9 students go through each year, and if students are cut, that is another chance for them to show their interest, and they can apply for consideration again in Grade 10, where they often work harder and make the team roster.

11

We ran into this problem last year, we had 85 students start out the year! The school does not permit capping the club, but eventually the training sessions in the Fall starting whittling down the participation to just the students who were serious about joining.
With only a few mentors, it made things initially difficult for sure!

This year, we are implementing a Club + Competitive Team 4276 system, where students interested “casually” in robotics (or have too many conflicting sports or other activities) can join the club and participate in team activities to learn and tinker, or help with non-build activities, but only Team members who have gone through proper safety and technical training/practice in the Fall can participate in the “Competitive Team” builds.

The club meets during lunch and sometimes after school, the Team participates in late afternoon or evening Training followed by the typical build season schedule in Jan-Feb.

12

This year we have nearly 60 members on our team, a huge jump from our 25 in our first season. We’re starting three VEX Robotics teams this year in order to keep everyone involved, wherein each VEX team is also to have sub-teams.

For the FRC, were going to look to work in tightly knit teams, and the more people we have on hand, the better - ie for Awards, Programming, Build.

Each VEX Team is going to have separate meetings as well.

13

i personally think that if you let them all do what they really want to do, as long as they don’t run wild, they should be fine. the ones who are only there for the college credit or title will end up weeding themselves out through the beginning of the season and those that honestly want to be in FIRST will stay and shine bright.

14

I’ll come here and share a story of my own - 1923 will be learning how to expand along with some of the others in this thread.

We’ve had some pretty explosive team growth over the past few years.

In our 9-season history, this has been our progression:

2006: 4
2007: 9
2008: 11
2009: 24
2010: 35
2011: 58
2012: 75
2013: 87
2014: 104
For 2015 (our 10th season! eek!) we had 170 students sign up as interested.

Now, that doesn’t mean we’ll get 170 - we’ll probably settle out somewhere in the 120-range. When a student pays their $200 fee, signs their copy of the handbook agreement - then they’re a team member. 104 last year for FRC was a struggle, and the mentors felt like we weren’t engaging everyone to their full potential.

In order to handle all of these students, we’ll be having an FTC team, the FRC team, and (we’re in the process of forming) a VRC team as well, all for the 2014-15 school year.

Our plan is that FTC is available to 7th, 8th, and 9th graders in our community who want to take that next step up from our FLL JumpStart program. The VRC team will be for younger high school students, or upperclassmen who don’t quite have the hours and weeks of time to commit to FRC build. Our FRC team will be for the experienced builders, the kids who are willing to go all-in on their time for the team.

All teams will operate with their own subteams just as FRC does. We encourage students to spend time with all the programs. However, our rule is, if you’ve made a commitment for FTC or VRC, you don’t get to skip it just because you want to show up at FRC build.

I, truthfully, have NO idea how this is going to turn out. It’ll be a learning experience for us as a team.

Karthik answered the question of ideal team size in his Simbot Seminar last night (hilariously, asked by one of 1923’s FRC students I noticed was watching.) His answer? Set goals for your team, and if you can accomplish them with the size team you have, then it works.

So that’s where we are right now. Setting goals for each team, and for our program as a whole, and seeing if we can make them happen.

All I know so far is that 170 is a scary, scary number.

15

I like your strategy, its well thought out.

  • How have the school administration(s) responded to your rapid growth?
    *]How do you measure team member engagement?
16

School administration: Tricky question. We’re a team that encompasses both of our district’s high schools (WWP North and South) and so what one administration likes, the other may not. So far for us though, the schools love having a cross-district program, and are slowly increasing their love/support for a technical group. Our school district, when I was a student, didn’t really like STEM. No shops in the schools, barely any programming courses, not enough calculus teachers to cover the entire senior class - but our team is sort of forcing that change just by existing. So, we’re a pain in their butts - but so far everyone seems to like what we’ve accomplished.

We do ask for a lot - since we can’t build on school grounds, we have to work on property we have donated, but still have meetings at the schools, store things at the schools, host events in the gyms - so we’re a little bit outside of their bubble and a little bit inside. Because we have people approved by the district to administrate our team, the actual school administrators stays kind of hands-off unless needed or invited by the appointed advisor.

**Team Member Engagement: **As far as objective metrics - we do have students ‘clock in’ for meetings, so we know how many hours they’re at a meeting. We know how many meetings our students show up to, and how many of our workshop classes they’ve attended to be able to learn about the team and its workings. So to be in ‘good standing’ with the team, there’s a percentage requirement for attendance, and participation - pretty much like there is during their school day.

However, a lot of our measure of how much a student’s taking from the team is a judgement call by the mentors. Is Jimmy/Susie just showing up and socializing, or have they actually demonstrated what they’ve learned? Have I, as a mentor, been able to work with them on something - maybe it’s the drivetrain, for example - and see them apply that knowledge in real-time? When I asked them to join in and help, did they jump right at it or did they continue milling around in the back? All these things count in for our measure of attendance/engagement/what have you, and they do affect a student’s chance at travel or leadership positions later in their time on the team.

Hope that answers your question.

17

Team 4 has a larger group of students this year (appx. 70), and our membership has fluctuated in the past. We’re not allowed to cut anyone unless they fail to meet the minimum number of hours or GPA requirement.

We have veteran team ‘leads’ that manage sub-groups such as machining, programming, public relations, etc. New members typically spend the first couple weeks alternating between all of these and getting a feel for what they want. Our leads focus on teaching and inspiring new members during that time through lessons and some short, hands-on tasks.

Some people drop out after this because they don’t have the time or interest, or their GPA doesn’t meet our requirement.

After the initiation period and first cut, we have a variety of hands-on projects for new members to work on. A veteran member oversees it to ensure safety rules are being followed, to answer questions, etc. Students can choose which project they want to be a part of: the 254 project, VEX, robot rebuild, or specialized programming tasks. By having new members take ownership of a project within small groups, they become more invested in their success. These projects also encompass a myriad of skills, so students get experience in all aspects of the team.

I suggest utilizing hands-on projects to help engage new members and to help them take ownership of their role on the team. Of course some members will drop out naturally over time, but the projects are great learning experiences and provide direction.