I have a coaching question for the group and I'd be interested to hear some
perspectives from current and former coaches.

My team has opted to tackle a very difficult, and currently unsolved
problem this year.  They learned about this problem when they interviewed
their expert sources and decided to give it a shot.  I'm all for tackling
hard problems.

What's happened since then is that they have done a ton of research.  I
feel like they understand the problem very well and I've been working with
them about how to articulate what they've learned.

Their 'solution' to the problem is much more theoretical than we've done in
previous years.  Due to the nature of the problem, they can't really build
or test anything without a NASA sized budget.  Once of the keys to their
solution involves some college level electrical engineering knowledge that
they don't have.  They know what they want to do, but they lack the tools
to be able to do the calculations to figure out the particulars of the
design.

As a coach, how should I coach them through this?  My gut says that they
should just lay it out there for the judges and hope they appreciate the
difficulty of the problem, but I'd hate for them to get low marks on their
project for not having a rigorous design.  I could find an Electrical
Engineer to help them with the calculations, but I feel like that goes
against the 'kids do the work'.

Thoughts?

Frank Levine

-- To UNSUBSCRIBE or CHANGE your settings, please visit https://listserv.jmu.edu/archives/vadcfll-l.html and select "Join or leave the list".

-- VADCFLL administrative announcements are sent via VADCFLL-ANNOUNCEMENTS-L. Visit https://listserv.jmu.edu/archives/vadcfll-ANNOUNCEMENTS-l.html to subscribe.