Starting a robotics team

Hello everyone, I was looking for some advice on starting an afterschool robotics competition team. What are some criteria that can be used for tryouts/selection of team members? Also, does anyone have an example of a robotics club charter/code of conduct?

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@Omar_Cortez Can you provide Timothy with some tips on getting started?

Hello @Timothy_Hauenstein! It’s so exciting to hear that you’re looking to start a robotics team!

There are tons of helpful resources available, but one of my favorites would be coaches.vex.com.

It contains example videos of interviews with other coaches, guidance on who to contact for further support, as well as information about the Code of Conduct.

Let me know if this helps! I know @Omar_Cortez will also have a lot of helpful information as Jason already mentioned :slight_smile:

Hi @Timothy_Hauenstein,

I’ve been running robotics clubs and competition teams for a few years and as interest has grown I’ve had to evolve our club. In order to make robotics inclusive for all I have increased the number of students per team from two to eight. While this includes more students I have needed to structure the sessions to ensure all students are participating and learning new skills. One suggestion that worked really well was allocating roles. However in saying this was fluid and all students could assist in all aspects of robotics. What was positive was students tried a number of roles and explored what each of these roles involved. Upon reflection with students they talked about how much they enjoyed for example coding and believed they may not have selected that to try during the season. As we approached competition, it was all hands on deck and all was documented in their team’s notebook.

Were we needed to have designated roles for example driving. Everyone tried out and we collected data. As a team they decided on a drive team and backup drivers as well.

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Hey Tim! something my students do is in a page in their notebook they create some team norms together. This gives ownership to the kids also. I’ll include some samples. We do this on our first pages with our team intros!



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