While walking around VEX Worlds, there were SO many wonderful and amazing and inspiring things that caught my attention and have stuck with me. This was my first experience with a VRC/VIQC Competition, and so the first time I had seen teams’ engineering notebooks in real life.
And can I just say HOLY WOW! To say that I was impressed by what I saw would be an extreme understatement. I wish I had taken photographs - but I was very much enjoying my conversations with teams about their notebooks and experiences, so wasn’t really thinking of it!
The level of detail - in written description, in sketches, in reflective commentary about decisions and competitions, was stunning! I had the chance to talk with a team that made the conscious choice, from the start of the season, to focus on the Design Award. They spent hours meticulously documenting their progress in an engineering notebook that was worthy of being leather bound!
My question to mentors and teachers is how do you get students’ started with their engineering notebooks? What are some things you do to inspire students to that level of diligence, perseverance, and pride in their written work? What causes a team to make a choice to set a goal specifically related to the engineering notebook?
I feel like not only could we learn things about motivating students for competition, but also about motivating students to have the same level of focus and passion for other written/documentation assignments in other subject areas.
