Coaching an FLL Challenge Team

You can help provide an unforgettable hands-on engineering/science research opportunity for students from ages 9 to 14 by volunteering as one of the two coaches required for an FLL Challenge team.  FIRST provides on-line and printed materials to guide you through the basics of coaching through a season.  ARBC provides advice and administrative support to de-mystify the process and let you focus on working with the student team members.  A willingness to learn along with the students is required; no previous experience teaching or in technology is necessary.  Click here to volunteer!

Coaching Principles and Success Factors

• Like many new experiences, guiding an FLL team through a season may appear daunting at first, but the knowledge and skills you need can be acquired a piece at a time as you go through the season
• As a coach, you must read the seasonal materials put out by FIRST, and you should do so at your earliest opportunity (and repeat as necessary throughout the season)
  • when you have questions about what the materials seek out help as locally/interactively as possible
  • You can raise questions to FIRST or the on-line FLL forums if/when they can’t be answered locally
• Most of the seasonal materials are accessed on-line through the FIRST Inspires website
  • you can read them on-line, or
  • download and print them out (a combination of these seems to work the best)
• As a coach, you must plan enough meeting time to allow the student team members to gain the knowledge, skills, and experience they need to do their best
  • limited team meeting time leads to limited understandings and abilities, diminishing the value of the program as a hands-on experiential learning tool
  • the average team seems to benefit from 2 meetings/week, from 2 to 2 1/2 hours per meeting
  • meeting that run too long can wear team members out, especially younger ones
• The team’s practice environment (game table, mat, and mission models) must be set up exactly as required for the seasonal challenge
  • A robot solution that is successful in an incomplete/incorrect environment will be exactly wrong in the competition environment

The four key aspects of FLL Challenge competition

• CORE VALUES: Learn, understand, and practice the FIRST Core Values:
  • teams will be judged during competitions for the knowledge and demonstration of these attitudes and principles
• INNOVATION PROJECT: Focus student attention on a specific team-identified problem and solve it:
  • solving problems requires acquiring knowledge and using that knowledge constructively
  • The Innovation Project (an engineering challenge exercise) gives teams the opportunity to learn in this fashion
  •  Teams will be judged for their understanding of a problem, their solution to the problem, and their ability to express their solution through a presentation/performance.
• ROBOT DESIGN: Develop solutions to a set of pre-determined robotic missions using a team-designed robot:
  • Teams will be judged for their ability to design, build, and program LEGO robots that perform specific, concrete tasks called “missions”
  • Robot design is evaluated in a judging session
• ROBOT GAME PLAY: Operate the team-designed robot on the playing field to score points by partially or fully completing “missions.”
  • Teams are measured by how many points they can earn while playing the game
  • Robot performance is measured solely by scores achieved during a 2.5 minute Robot Game match (each team plays 3 matches in a tournament, only the best match’s score is used)

More details on Core Values, the Innovation Project, and the Robot

Core Values

The FIRST Core Values express the FIRST philosophies of Gracious Professionalism and Coopertition:

• Discovery: We explore new skills and ideas.
• Innovation: We use creativity and persistence to solve problems.
• Impact:  We apply what we learn to improve our world.
• Inclusion: We respect each other and embrace our differences.
• Teamwork: We are stronger when we work together.
• Fun: We enjoy and celebrate what we do!

The Innovation Project

The innovation project requires research and exploration of a domain of human interest (specified by FIRST in the seasonal Challenge), the identification of a problem that exists in that domain, and the creation of a new or refined solution to that problem.  The team must be able to describe (with details and citations) their research (ideally supplemented by guidance from experts found in their own community), the problem that they choose to solve, and their innovative solution to that problem.

The Robot Design and Game

Designing, building, and operating small robots is an excellent way for students to experience and practice an engineering development process through many iterations of a plan/build/test cycle.  Ideas don’t always work right away, and perseverance is required to get things right.  As a coach, you don’t have to start with any specialized knowledge of robotics, but it helps to know some basics:

• Robotics is a blend of mechanical components and programming code; a robot needs both in order to accomplish planned tasks
• Everyone starts small; students and coaches must learn the very basics before progressing to more elaborate structures (both mechanical and code)
• Knowledge of how to use robotics to solve problems comes at first from learning how basic components work through tutorials and experimentation; and later from creative planning, implementation, and testing:
  • Tutorials and experimentation teach the basic functions that are the foundation of solving problems using a robot
  • Experience is gained by repeated action and observation of results
  • Failing is part of learning; encourage students to learn by trying and accepting their failures as part of the learning process

Physical Robot Parts

Robot have four basic types of parts (all of which are provided in the LEGO robotics kits for FLL Challenge teams):

1. Structure (a chassis or body, wheels or tracks for movement, and attachments or manipulators),
2. Sensors (that pick up information from the environment),
3. Actuators (motors that cause the robot to move), and a
4. Processor (a small computer that executes pre-programmed instructions that read the sensors and drive the actuators movement)