Team Structure and Teaching

[littlebro5]

I’m wondering how peoples’ teams are structured. My team doesn’t really have a defined structure and we kind of play it by ear so a lot of time we don’t know what to have people do. One thing in particular I’m interested in is how people go about teaching new people during meetings? (This is for the high School level).

Thanks~

[kaelem]

For our team generally we have people who are generally specialized in what they do but aren’t constrained to just do that one thing. ie. I am a programmer but I still help build every now and then. However I still undertake more than 90% of the programming.

You could probably say you have someone who is the “main role” and other people are a secondary to that role but generally you probably will find different teams will all have different structures or systems and it’s just what works well for them.

For newbies when people first join our club/org they usually build clawbots and compete in a mini game for fun, then they get put into actual VRC teams.

[Foster]

All of the teams that I work with have a mentor attached to them to help with the “teaching” part of the build. Clubs do group training sessions (this week I’m teaching about basic construction and bases) to spin new members up to speed as fast as possible. It’s about 5 weeks of hour long sessions on the build / design process. (And yes, EVERY session repeats the “any time you put an axle through a support piece you MUST use a bearing block” mantra). After build I’ll do two weeks on programming. We start on blocks and then I’ll do a session on the Python text version. If teams are using PROS, then they are on their own.

All the mentors I work with are good on the line between “teaching” and “doing”. I’ll do my favorite rant “It’s not helpful to dump $1,200 of assorted parts in front of roboteers and expect them to build a winning robot without some teaching” So all of you that are about to snap back with “Muh, it’s to be student led” need to snap back and read the prior sentence again. And then thank a teacher for teaching you how to read.