Ethan and I went to USU to observe the VEX club that meets on campus. They have three teams of about four boys each working with the VEX EDR classroom robotics platform (the ones that look like they are made from an Erector Set). The USU student who was there gave me some background and explained how they are running things.
The three teams are a mix of experienced members and new members, but they are careful to watch for balance. If they have kinds that are too advanced they can work quickly and the less experienced members sit out not really catching on to what is happening. Even with the younger team I watched, three boys sat around disengaged while the technical expert tried to resolve an issue with their computer and programming software interfacing with the system. One of the other two groups looked fully involved and another had one person, sometimes two, disengaged while they waited for the other two to work with the robot. This lets me see in action the practical upper limits of team sizes. If you had ten people on a team, 8 may be disengaged most of the time without a lot of creativity and supervision. Four seemed ideal with six probably being the upper limit.
No comments:
Post a Comment