Lego Robotics Club/Team Tryout Help

I am helping with our Lego Robotic Club. We have around 100 kids trying out(based on forms turned in). We have to narrow our team down to 10 students. We are trying to devise a scoring system/rubric for us to use to eliminate students fairly. any thoughts or ideas. This is my first year so I am jumping in head first. We had two teams last year but the Asst. Superintendent wants only one team. Thanks for any possible help.

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Permalink Reply by Katy Scott on May 4, 2010 at 9:47am

Wow! Tough job... but I suppose it's a good problem to have.

Just my 2 cents, but I think it's important to have a diversity of students on robotics teams. In my experience, some of the worst-performing students were the best club members. Often, clubs like this can turn around troubled or underperforming kids. I guess what I'm saying is, to make your job even harder, I'd recommend not basing admittance on grades....

With 100 applicants, it's going to be almost impossible to narrow the list in any fair manner. I would say, first, if you haven't already, talk to all the applicants and let them know how demanding the club will be, and that if they don't meet expectations (behavior, timeliness, etc.), they'll be kicked out. Make the club sound terrible, and see who withdraws their name (because these kids really don't want it). Then use the lottery system to select students. I think it's the most fair way of choosing just 10 percent, and the there's no awkward conversations with kids or parents about why they weren't good enough.

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Permalink Reply by Aaron Maurer on May 4, 2010 at 12:31pm

These are some good ideas. I wish I could go lottery, but here is my next dilemma. We are expected to win or at least be a top contender. So, we have a summer camp in place where students can come for two weeks to learn the basics and sharpen their skills. We are then looking at trying to create some sort of scoring system that deals with the robot performing a function and then the presentation piece as well because both of these elements are required for the state competition. But you are right in that we need a balance so trying to fit the different types of personalities and roles into a scoring system is tough. However, we have to have some merit to our decisions because kids and parents will want to know why they did not make and what they can do to prepare for next time.