This may be the most crucial advice I can give, through my 8 years of doing robotics…
My two cents:
- School is priority.
When it comes to robotics, that can be learned throughout their entire time in school. If a student needs to omit robotics for grades/classes, or even just needs a break, that is perfectly healthy and preferred. This long-term wise can improve motivation for students by giving the student body a choice and therefore would end up finding passion naturally in robotics through a consentual push pull into STEM. - The students have autonomy to learn on their own.
When it comes to teaching material:
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Teaching in the classroom: Computer Science - Learning C++
You can guide students to learn and how to apply such skills when coding their robot. You can guide them to learncpp.com to learn how to code in C++ in Visual Studio, in which the skills and standard libraries are directly accessible when coding PROS or VEXCode Pro. Then, as for robotics, both VEXCode and PROS use Visual Studio Code as an extension (however VEXCode can has their own IDE, which at times is sub-optimal for more advanced users).
VEXCode Installation: VEXcode Install V5 - VEX Robotics
VEXCode API Reference: Comprehensive Guide to C++ on VEX V5 Platform — VEXcode Documentation
PROS Installation: Home » Getting Started | PROS for V5
PROS API Reference: Home | PROS for V5 -
Teaching in the classroom: Computer Science - Abstract Concepts and Ideas Pertaining to Robotics
You can create a library of resources that teaches students how to learn advanced topics like odometry (particularly based on 5225A’s arc-based odometry paper), pure pursuit, PID, etc. Additionally, there are a plethora of PROS and VEXCode libraries that can help guide students to learn such advanced concepts. For example, LemLib for PROS, or Jar Template for VEXCode -
Teaching in the classroom: Mechanical Engineering - Learning the Concepts
There are plenty of resources available on build quality and designs, alongside helpful resources on building a robot at: https://wiki.purduesigbots.com/. -
Teaching in the classroom: Mechanical Engineering - Creating 3D Models of the VEX Robot
As for 3D modeling your robot, you can find Fusion 360 free education licenses for instructors and students here: https://www.autodesk.com/education/edu-software/overview. You can start off strong by downloading and importing the Fusion 360 library for VEX Robotics here: VEX CAD Fusion 360 Parts Library 2.0.0 Release - #5 by Icy1 -
Teaching in the classroom: Documentation - Understanding the Rubric
There is a rubric for the Engineering Design Notebook, which can be found here: https://kb.roboticseducation.org/hc/en-us/articles/4461349729047-Judging-Resource-Engineering-Notebook-Rubric
This rubric allows not only the students to understand what is expected of the judges, but it allows you to help students with shortfalls in the engineering notebook they are developing. Traditionally, judges love to see drawings, advanced topics, passion, and innovation. Quality of the work is often better than the quantity of it. The main idea is that any individual with zero knowledge can understand the engineering notebook. And something like that can be confusing to students who may just want to jump into the action. Instead of having a negative response to these type of students, you can have a positive response by doing something like ice cream parties for every milestone reached in the engineering notebook. You can have like a “hall of fame” to the teams that display the most professionalism for the season. You can find a good example of an engineering notebook here: BLRS2 '23-'24 Engineering Notebook | Purdue SIGBots Wiki
Students should be able to try different roles and see what works with them, switch between them etc. The goal is to turn robotics into a passion and make it fun. Constructive criticism should be supported, and there may be disagreements at times. When there’s a disagreement, you can consider resolution protocols like a weighted pro/con or something of the sort (applying weights to pros and weights to cons and then compare the total weight of the pros and cons of a particular category).
I hope this information is informative and helpful for your endeavors as a coah! With enough funding, and how much you wish to apply this knowledge, nothing is impossible.
Cheers!
- Connor