Managing multiple teams?

[BakingSodaVolcano]

Our FLL "experiment" last year has stirred up interest at school, and we expect to add more teams this year. We have a core group of kids who now have a year of experience under their belt, and I've also contacted a local FRC/FTC group that is willing to provide some mentorship.

For those of you who have multiple teams, how do you manage them?

Do they all meet at the same time / location?

What I am thinking is that we will do a few things together -- training sessions for programming / building -- but then have them break off so that they can work independently on their project and robot game solutions, and do their own team-building activities. If one team is having difficulty with something, then it would be fine for them to ask other teams for some advice, of course.

(The only way this is going to work is if I have some more folks step in to coach, but I am hopeful about that...)

Also -- I think there may actually be more kids/parents interested in Jr. FLL than in FLL. When we showed off the robot at the school open house, the K-2 grade parents were all over it. Has anyone had success running a Jr. FLL session concurrently with an FLL session? Some of these are siblings of the FLL kids, so it makes sense to meet at the same time (just need a parent to guide them).

Thanks in advance for any suggestions / feedback.

[Tom Mosher]

Originally Posted by BakingSodaVolcano

Our FLL "experiment" last year has stirred up interest at school, and we expect to add more teams this year. We have a core group of kids who now have a year of experience under their belt, and I've also contacted a local FRC/FTC group that is willing to provide some mentorship.

For those of you who have multiple teams, how do you manage them?

Do they all meet at the same time / location?

What I am thinking is that we will do a few things together -- training sessions for programming / building -- but then have them break off so that they can work independently on their project and robot game solutions, and do their own team-building activities. If one team is having difficulty with something, then it would be fine for them to ask other teams for some advice, of course.

(The only way this is going to work is if I have some more folks step in to coach, but I am hopeful about that...)

Also -- I think there may actually be more kids/parents interested in Jr. FLL than in FLL. When we showed off the robot at the school open house, the K-2 grade parents were all over it. Has anyone had success running a Jr. FLL session concurrently with an FLL session? Some of these are siblings of the FLL kids, so it makes sense to meet at the same time (just need a parent to guide them).

Thanks in advance for any suggestions / feedback.

If the teams meet at the same time, you're going to need multiple sets of equipment and tables to keep them all busy, and enough space for all. Can your budget support that?

You might need to be careful that it doesn't give the appearance of being one large super-team that exceeds the size restriction.

[Dean Hystad]

Originally Posted by Tom Mosher

If the teams meet at the same time, you're going to need multiple sets of equipment and tables to keep them all busy, and enough space for all. Can your budget support that?

You might need to be careful that it doesn't give the appearance of being one large super-team that exceeds the size restriction.

There is no team size restriction other than 10 kids per team number. I don't think it is a good idea to work in such a manner, but I have seen teams that worked very closely together (usually school teams) with no kind of sanction. It is a little unnerving when the team comes in for technical judging and says they can't explain parts of missions because they were developed by another team. You have to evaluate them on their own work and do your best to forget everything else.

I ran two teams once and had them meet at the same time. Twenty young kids turned out to be too many to have in one room at one time. Even when I got some help (yes, I stupidly tried to coach 20 kids all by myself) there was still too much energy to be a good learning environment. Later I helped coach a couple of teams as well as my girls. The girls mentored the younger teams a couple of times during the season, but mostly each team had individual team meetings. That worked much better and all three teams advanced to state and won awards.

[timdavid]

I worked with one school that had about 8 teams meeting across 3 afternoons during the school week. With up to 3 teams in a classroom at one time, each with between 5 and 7 kids, things tended to get a little hectic. The program did have multiple mission board sets and computers, so the resource contention was not too much of an issue. The program was coordinated by a teacher, and each team had one or more parent volunteers. Most of the teams also met for a few hours over the weekend at the house of a team member, supervised by parent volunteers.

As a parent volunteer, I thought the teams were more productive and manageable when working in a quieter, more isolated environment. However, the professional teacher (and kids) didn't seem to mind the chaos of multiple teams in one classroom.

I'm glad to hear you are actively seeking additional coaches and mentors. I think the biggest problem when expanding an FLL program is the risk of burning out the program coordinator. I recommend carefully considering the impact of different options on your schedule. If teams meet on different afternoons, does that mean you need to be there on each of those afternoons? How often will the teams meet during the week? Will the teams want to meet more often as tournament time approaches? Having multiple teams meet on different days can quickly turn FLL into an everyday activity for a program coordinator.

[BakingSodaVolcano]

Great points, everyone. They are generally along the lines of what I am pondering. I've coached kids sports for several years, and a lot of the team management issues parallel what happens with an FLL team.

To clarify a little bit --- I am thinking that we will have a couple (well, 2-4) sessions where they all meet together to do some pre-season training. Then, the teams would meet at different times/days for the season, depending on how their coach sets it up. I tend to agree about the huge group in one place. It may not be a limitation for the kids, but it is a limitation for the coach, at least in my case! (though our other coach is a professional teacher, so she could probably handle it - I am just a scientist who wants my kids and other kids to at least be exposed to how much fun STEM careers can be).

We are waiting to hear about some grants that will provide additional hardware. If those go through, then we will have the means to expand. If not, then it will remain 1 or maybe 2 teams this year, plus a Jr. FLL team, depending on if we can get a couple more people to step in and spin up as coaches. The point about "burnout" is also well-taken. I am not able to do a lot more than I already am, but am fortunate enough to be working with a supportive staff at the school, so we are trying to pace the growth in such a way that we don't over-extend anyone.

[dna1990]

The experts above nail all the good points.

I would just emphasize to really get your adult team on the same page. This starts with you of course, while I am sure you're still stoked from the excitement of last year - be realistic in how fast you can expand that success. What worked wonderful for 'that' specific groups of kids, may not work for new folks - even if all of the environment is the same.

And we have all met them (and at times were them) - well-meaning parents. Be sure the extra coaches are understanding and into the time needed. Be sure the FRC mentors can juggle school work, band contests, driver's ed, etc.


Personally I side with those above, smaller quieter meetings yeild more focussed results. There are certainly times when loud, fun, silly is needed...but eventually each team needs find their own identity and be aware of and proud of what they learn and accomplish. So maybe 1-2 intro skills sessions in the beginning can be combined for large economies of scale, but try to separate after that.

And that is why I stated to really assess your own energy and time. More teams, mean more meeting times. Which means more places, schedules, coaches, rides home, whatever. To spread it out for their benefit, means to spread yourself thinner. How thin can you go and still award each team their deserved attention?

To get the adults on the same page, will also need (IMO) a group meeting in person. eMail or even phone calls don't tend to level set expectations for something new like this.

[BakingSodaVolcano]

More really good points. Thanks again. I do value the collective wisdom of this forum - it has helped me, and my team, a lot during year 1!

[someonewhobikes]

We have 3 teams that all meet at the same time. 2 are elementary teams (10 students each) made up of 5th & 6th graders from my wife's school; the other is a smaller team that has both middle & elementary school students from various schools. We have 2 tables, each with a field kit, and 15 total robots.

In the past we've had two separate rooms in which to meet, but that's being cut back to a single classroom. We also have my wife's room as overflow, but since there are no FLL tables there it tends to get used only for project work.

We're going to handle the space decrease with a room rearrangement and hope it works. We're also cutting back on the size of our 5th/6th grade teams, but haven't decided how much to cut. Probably 6 or 7 per team but part of that will depend on the kids that we have apply.

The only way we (3 consistent adults with another couple there most of the time) make this work is by having mentors from our high school's FRC team. Without them, there's no way we'd still be moderately sane. Note that there must be some level of insanity involved; otherwise we'd not be doing this.

[BakingSodaVolcano]

I wanted to follow up on how this turned out. We had a lot of interest in FLL this year, but ended up with only 8 kids (grades 5-7) who could commit to our meeting schedule. I had thought about having two teams with that - one experienced, one team of newbies, 4 members each - but various things made the decision to just have one team an easy one (lack of another coach, desire to have some mentoring from the experienced kids, late-arriving grant funds for extra computers/NXT, etc.).

So, it's been interesting watching the new folks work to fit in, with their individual personalities, interests, and talents. I had a real desire for everyone to really learn/understand all aspects of the programming this year, but I think that was an unrealistic goal. So it's been modified to have everyone do at least some programming, some robot design/building and project work. We've now had a couple of people step up to take the lead in each area, so I think things have worked out pretty well. We will be missing two of our more experienced members at the qualifier because of the silly way our region puts all 6 qualifiers on the same day before Thanksgiving week when many schools are off for the week, but I think that the new folks can cover for them pretty well because they are all understanding the core concepts of what the team is trying to do (if not every detail).

More good news is that we have two new Jr. FLL teams, and some of those kids and one of the Jr. FLL coaches (hopefully!) will be ready for FLL next year. The Jr. FLL kids are having the time of their life, and I expect many of them to be very good in FLL for the next few years.

[Tom Mosher]

BSV, thanks for the update!

I have a totally different mentoring situation this year than last. This year's team (a school-based after-class activity) has 7 rookie kids, one vet, the other experienced members having graduated to FTC. They have one Education kit and access to one desktop computer. They got started very late (after a local coach was recruited to take on a second team), and have just finished building a base Tribot and have most of the mission models completed. They meet twice a week for one hour. They're probably ready to start planning their robot game strategy this week, and assessing whether to stay with the Tribot design. The Tribot was simply a way to get a functioning robot quickly so the newbies could perform some programming lessons.

Last year's team of 10 (mixed vets and rookies) met in the school's computer lab for two hours twice a week, and had access to six Education kits. The team split into pairs, each having an identical copy of the robot and their own programming computer. Their only shared resources were the mission mat itself, and one USB host download cable. Meetings were a whirlwind of quick-turn experimentation and debugging. No, the meetings weren't very efficient. By the time I started attending once a week, they already had several missions under development. Four weeks later, those missions were still under development. Yes, odometry ruled the lab.

I have hopes that this year's team will learn a great amount, and thereby have great success.