Robotics Team - Is this typical?

[HeatherL]

My son joined a vex-iq team this year and he and I are both frustrated with how it's going, so I'd like to know if this is just how all teams operate, or just ours? 

 

A little background... The team was around last year, but had older kids on it.  The leader had the oldest kids, so this year they went and formed a high school team, leaving the team to family who was part of it last year, but with an 8 year old.  Out of the 9 team members this year only the coach's son and I think one other boy is returning and one other boy was on a different team last year though his school.  So that leaves the majority new and ages 9-12

 

We were told at the first meeting that the boys would use the curriculum available on the site to learn how to build, program, and operate the robot.  This has never happened.  The first meeting the boys were asked to build the playing field, but half didn't want to use the instructions, so it had to be redone by an adult.  My son and I took home part to build on our own and the coach built the rest (maybe with his son, I don't know).  Since then the meetings are chaotic and the boys have learned nothing about the actual robot.  They have run around messing with each other, playing hide and seek last week, and practicing driving the now built robot that was built outside of the meeting, by whom, I'm not sure. 

 

The huge frustration came this week when the robot was sent home with my son to change part of it to stop it from tipping over.  My son got very upset because he had NO IDEA what he was supposed to do, to fix it, how the pieces worked, how they went together, etc...  It ended with him storming off (he's 9) and dad finishing it so it could be returned to the group at the next meeting.

 

I looked up the curriculum on line and the boys were supposed to use the kit to do each lesson and start out small building small things to see how everything worked.  Lesson by lesson, they added different components to get ideas to how to build the competition robot.  But we can't do that now because tons of the parts have already been used to build the competition robot. 

 

My husband, my son and my I are all just frustrated over this experience so far.  After meeting 4 times now, my son has no better understanding of robotics then when he began.  He has one friend in the group and we paid $100 to join, so I'm not sure if we are ready to throw in the towel just yet.  He really wants to program it since programming is what he loves, but the chaos of the meetings is driving my husband crazy and it's a big time commitment with not much return.   

 

What says the group?  Is this common or not?  Any suggestions?  Also, we are not looking to help out any more then being at the meetings and trying to support the coach.  I already lead 2 scout dens and my husband is a director for our community theatre and had a huge children's show beginning next month.

[cjzimmer1]

My eldest did a Lego League one year and that sounds exactly like our experience with it too.  For us the only redeeming part was that they needed many boards built for the team competition and most teams were unable/unwilling to build a board so the overall organizer was left with 6 boards to build.  Our family ended up building three of them and we had so much fun as a family sitting around and building the sets.  But the programming stuff did not happen in that environment.

 

DS did take a summer school class that was run by the high school director and students of their robotics program.  It was a fundraiser for them but it was a well run class and DS did learn from that.  But it was lead by an actual teacher who did this for a living.  The parent led groups was a fail for us.

[hornblower]

I would say it's not unusual but it's also not acceptable.  IME, good groups are more expensive than what you're paying;  unless you luck out with a really gifted parent leader, you need to pay for someone who really knows what they're doing & how to teach this well. 

 

It's not easy though we've had a couple teachers who made it look easy. 

I would bail and find a better group. When he was younger, ds did some summer robotics camps done by a local high school. The instructor was a comp sci teacher & he had a whole bunch of his high school students who were helping out with the class & keeping all the kids on task, helping them problem solve, keeping the frustration at a reasonable level.  Maybe see if there's anything like that in your area? 



 

[Kathryn]

It sounds like what we went through with the team sponsored by the engineering department of our state university.

[FaithManor]

Unacceptable. But an awful lot of adults who are ill equipped for these types of programs leap in because they sound like fun and have scholarships available then jus hope somebody comes up with something that works.

 

That said $100.00 isn't much for an engineering program that is based on expensive components, travel for competition, etc. Our NASA student launch initiative team has to pay $350 each over the course of the first four months and that will just get them started. They will then have to fundraise another $2000. It would be every bit that expensive or worse for First Tech Challenge.

 

Mentors of these programs either need to have the expertise or go get some training before forming teams. Next year I would interview mentors from a variety of challenges and see if you can find one that knows how to manage a team properly.

[trulycrabby]

Yes, sounds a lot like our experience this year. :zombie: