Balancing inspiration from others and developing creativity. The following article has ideas shared in the Facebook Group FLL: Share & Learn.

The question of allowing students to watch YouTube Challenge solution videos comes up every year. While some argue that their students need inspiration and that engineering requires building upon other people’s solutions, majority of coaches in Share & Learn prefer not to use current season YouTube videos as a resource. Here are some thoughts they shared:

1. Loss of Creativity: Once students see or decide one solution is THE WAY to do things, they have a very difficult time changing course. Kids are linear thinkers and if they see “a” solution their brain goes to that is “the” (only) solution and they are blinded to other alternatives.
2. Intimidation: Some get discouraged when they cannot throw together a robot which completes multiple missions in just a couple of meetings like what they saw on YouTube
3. Need for more: Many of the online solutions are massive, complicated, and/or use uncommon parts. The kids get intimidated, and some get into the mindset that they need to purchase more stuff to be able to do well.
4. Past Seasons are just as effective: Rookie teams can watch robot videos from past seasons to get inspiration and ideas for the types of attachments and strategies that could be used and learn to apply them to the current season.
5. Youth contest to build skills: FIRST is a youth contest in which students are judged upon the work and ideas they came up with. While it teaches engineering design principles, it’s in the context of a judged event. Students are served best by going through the process from start to finish rather than copying what someone else has done.
6. Building basic skills: Videos/resources on basic mechanics (gearing, etc.) can be useful without providing a solution to the actual Challenge.
7. The importance of process: FIRST LEGO League works best when kids can learn and grow year to year. This program is PROCESS driven, not results driven.
8. Pride and accomplishment: When they complete missions with their original attachments and robot design, they feel a sense of accomplishment; It motivates them to do better.
9. Building creativity: There is no perfect/right way of building a robot/solving the missions. Being told to create your own design (mistakes and all) is extremely helpful in building their creative and technical skills. While a team that copies another team might get a high score, their solutions lack their own creativity.
10. Mistakes in YouTube videos: It goes beyond getting answers to the current challenges as some of the videos are done by people not in FIRST LEGO League anymore and break rules that current teams must adhere to.
11. Perfection in YouTube videos: Most teams only post their one perfect robot runs. Students get discouraged when they are not able to imitate that success.