Volunteer Mentorship

FIRST General Forum
1

This idea comes from discussion in this thread about a volunteer mentorship program. Users have suggested that informal programs have been used in MN, FiM, and NE but that a more official policy would help.

The goal of this thread is to have an open discussion about whether this kind of program is something that we as a community would like to pursue, and if it is, the best ways to go about it. If you have an experience with what is happening in your region please let everyone know so we can all learn from each other. Also, I would like to hear from every region if possible.

The last thread was great with well thought out responses and lots of respect among members and we should try to continue that in this thread.

I will start off with some of my thoughts:

  1. I think a program like this will do lots to train new volunteers in key roles and to keep graduating students involved in FIRST.

  2. I think there will be more trust built up between event staff and the community if this kind of mentorship exists. In my experience, having a personal connection and good experiences with your key volunteers makes a gigantic difference in the quality of the event.

  3. The program needs to be optional. At some events, there simply won’t be enough trained people to accommodate this happening. Clearly, at an event running 2 hours behind with only a single FTA, that FTA should not be required to train others. Also, I don’t think we should force any volunteer to mentor others if they don’t wish to. I don’t want to make any volunteer uncomfortable with this new responsibility and have them turn away from the program.

  4. It may require the creation of a new key volunteer position. As it stands, the Volunteer Coordinators would be best suited to managing a mentorship program but they are often overworked as it is. I would love to hear from some VCs about their experiences and how they think it could work.

  5. I don’t know how to handle this from a logistical perspective. Would it be best to have volunteers sign up as mentors and to be mentored in VIMS? How do we “graduate” people from being mentored into being a key volunteer? How do we make sure we aren’t burning out our current volunteers by doing this?

2

Which volunteers are you seeing as the key volunteers?

FTA? FTAA? CSA? HR?

I’ll share the roles I’ve worked and what I experienced as far as training for each to see if that adds anything to the conversation.

CSA
As a NI employee, there wasn’t a lot of external training given. To some extent, it’s assumed NI should be able to handle roboRIO issues. If I weren’t with NI, I’d likely have wanted some time working with someone that had more experience. Ideally, I’d want CSAs to come from active mentors as that’s truly the best way to understand the hardware and software within the FRC context. It’s very difficult to handle the problems kids run into without knowing that context.

To that end, I’ve spent time with other CSAs helping them see what I see and learn how to use the tools I use so that they’re more equipped to answer questions quickly and to help teams troubleshoot the issues they run into. I’m not sure there’s a whole lot of mentorship that can really help this role. You need to be around teams enough to pick it up. Following around someone more experienced at an event can give you just enough to be mostly competent. But, it doesn’t really prepare you to handle the role on your own.

Field Supervisor
To be entirely honest, I’ve worked this role twice and still don’t know what it’s supposed to do. Each event had their own idea and both times I was asked to fill the role when I showed up to the event. From what I hear, there’s training but it doesn’t really help all that much.

I did watch another event where the FS spent a great deal of time with a college student interested in the role and the two of them worked great together. This is one of those roles where I think a mentorship for an event would pay dividends.

Referee
For this role, you have to pass a certification test and then work on a team with the HR. You spend the practice matches learning the intricacies of the rules and preparing to call things correctly during the matches that actually matter. At any given time, you’re free to talk to the HR after a match (before the scores are presented) to discuss anything you saw and ensure you make the right call for these situations. Before you can become the HR, you need to spend several years in the ref role and work your way towards being the carrier of cards. There’s already a pretty official process here.

FTAA
There was FTA training and I followed along with that. But, this role is almost entirely a mentor (FTA) and mentored (FTAA) role in the first place. Before you can transition towards the FTA role, you need to spend time as the FTAA to several different FTAs and learn from each to show HQ that you’ve brought several different perspectives to your learning process and you’re prepared for the responsibility. You also need to take the time to earn the trust of both those FTAs as well as the VCs for these events to get put onto the field in the first place. It’s a rather strong process.

For the positions I’d look at as key, there already seem to be processes in place unless my experience is abnormal. Is this not what others see? Or, do I see different key volunteers than others here? The roles I’ve pulled are non-key as I’ve always had someone else there that makes the actual decisions and I’m there to help them out in my mind.

3

In my experience, the field super usually takes the lead on field reset and physical maintenance of the field. Every FTA has their own preference on how to implement this and the exact division of tasks.

In broad strokes, the FTAA and Field Super are both there to support the FTA in making sure the field runs smoothly: the FTAA on the connectivity/electronics side and the FS on the hardware side.

I’ve found this to be true as well. I’m not sure the process needs to be more formal, since we want there to be organic growth into the key positions. Current key volunteers are pretty good at realizing which other volunteers are ready to move into other positions.

There’s also the networking component. In the other thread, someone said “just ask” if you want to try another role. Roles are assigned by people (VCs) - they can’t know to assign you if you don’t indicate you want to be assigned. If they think you’re ready, then problem solved! If not, they will usually tell you what you have to do to improve your skills so that you can be successful in your new role. This process has worked pretty well in my experience.

4

I can provide some insight into MN’s process for this.

It all really starts for new volunteers in the off-season. We have several off-season events, and will run training at any of them for interested volunteers. Our big focus is on an event called MRI here in the cities, but while it may be less structured, we still do it at other events (like Gitchi Gummi in Duluth) as needed.

For MRI, we provide dinner the evening before (Friday evening), and have 1-2 hour long sessions for some of the key positions - LRI, CSA, Ref, MC, etc. It’s a chance for those in those key positions to talk to (in my case) prospective Robot Inspectors and help them understand what’s expected, what they need to know, and everything the job entails.

We gather together the next morning and then they actually do the job. Inspectors go around in small groups (2-4 people, max) with an experienced inspector leading them to “inspect” robots. As there’s no required inspection at the event in order to play, this method doesn’t generally cause problems for teams, and a team always has the option to say no when we ask if we can walk through an inspection with them (Most say “Yes, let me get some underclassmen here to go through the experience!”). Other positions are similar - CSA’s go around looking at what teams are doing, MC’s/Game Announcers get to actually call a game on the field with immediate feedback from our veterans, Various field personnel roles get to experience what those roles are like and spend time with those key volunteers getting to know everything they need to.

During the season, it’s pretty much show up and do the job for most people. If you happened to make it to an off-season for training, you’re that much more prepared. If not, then we do what we can. For inspection, I have new inspectors “shadow” experienced inspectors through an inspection or two until they’re comfortable enough to do it themselves - I simply identify that as “expected” for new inspectors and let people self-identify from there, it’s not really a formal process.

Once we get through an event or the season, I generally talk with my fellow LRI’s in the state to see who they may have worked with that could be ready to become an LRI. We’re currently “full”, in that we have as many LRI’s as we can fit in the state, but I like to keep a pipeline of identified people that are ready to step up when needed. Once identified, we see if the person is interested, and then the following year at events we’ll have them shadow part-time, when the LRI is doing something they can learn from (Talking with the rookies in the morning, talking at the driver’s meeting, handling a significant issue, if appropriate, etc), the rest of the time they’re doing the same old job of inspecting robots. These individuals may also get some additional responsibilities, like getting a tough robot fixed up enough to pass inspection, or subbing in for the inspection manager for an hour or two to understand what that position is like.

For us, this process is overseen by our amazing VC, but is largely driven by the “department leads” for each area. Basically, she has a single LRI, and single FTA, a single Head Ref, etc that she uses to coordinate everything needed for that role. It means that I put in some energy organizing training and ensuring we have enough people where we need them in the off-season, and the other LRI’s in the state don’t need to worry about it (except when I bug them to help update a presentation or be at an off-season event). I took the role back in 2013-ish, and have since seen 4 new LRI’s come up in the state, and countless (Ok, I could count if I wanted to, I have a spreadsheet with info going back that far) RI’s get started. There are also several more individuals in the pipeline towards becoming and LRI, as we have room for them.

You can contrast this process to what we had when I became an LRI in 2012. I was asked if I was interested in 2011 by Jeff, said yes, and was told I would have a year of training before taking on the role (Which I thought was great, as I had no idea what would be involved!). The following year I was LRI for 2 events, as we were pretty desperate. And then Jeff went and moved to Wisconsin, leaving me with 4 events in the state and no one to help me run them :stuck_out_tongue:

I think having an established process like what we use here in MN is awesome. But I think it needs to be handled/run regionally, not from HQ. From HQ’s perspective, it’s all about the numbers - are there X number of robot inspectors, Y number of refs, etc. Regionally, however, it’s all about the people. We put so much effort into it because we know these people are going to be helping us staff the 4 events we run. Getting inspectors trained up and new LRI’s identified, trained, and “promoted” really is in my best interest - it make things so much easier for me during the season. There’s nothing better than going into an event with an inspector crew that is fully trained and staffed, and it’s so much less stressful being responsible for 1 regional instead of 2, even if they are 4-5 weeks apart. Having other trained LRI’s around makes my job easier as I have someone to talk through a situation with. Having someone that has some training for LRI, even if they don’t have the black vest yet, gives me an inspector I can rely on to help me create a successful event, even if I have to ask them to do something that isn’t strictly inspection related.

5

psst OP, PCH also does this :wink:

We’re relatively new at it, but the basic idea is get people to try out different positions during our off season event, then see what fits best for those new volunteers, and hope they’ll come back for the district events next season.

This is over simplified, but I’m at work and shouldn’t be typing essays on CD!

6

Jon did an amazing job of summing up Minnesota’s procedure. I’ll also add that we have a few collegiate robotics organizations that help to supply a lot of the new volunteers.

I agree that HQ doesn’t need to/doesn’t have time to implement a program to bring in new volunteers. I think this is handled well on a regional level. In order to improve how volunteer recruitment/retainment is handled on a regional level, it would be cool to get a list of best practices from each region.

7

This is more what I was hoping for. I would like to see what each region does and see what kind of best practices the community could come up with.