Learning Paths and Time Estimates
Telemark is written as a full start-to-finish curriculum, but most students do not need every unit in order on day one. Use these paths to decide what to study first based on your robot role.
The estimates below assume a student reads the lesson, completes the simulator challenge, and asks at least one debugging question. A fast reader may move quicker; a team building and testing on real hardware should expect extra time for wiring, configuration, and mechanical fixes.
Rookie Programmer Path
Goal: become useful in TeleOp and understand the FTC SDK lifecycle.
Recommended order: Units 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, then Unit 8 lessons 8.1 and 8.2.
Estimated time: 10-16 hours.
Checkpoint: you can write a TeleOp that maps motors, reads gamepad input, sends telemetry, and stops safely.
Do not rush rookies into autonomous pathing before they can explain init(), loop(), hardwareMap.get(), and why motor power must be set back to zero.
Drive-Base Path
Goal: own drivetrain code, driver feel, and basic autonomous movement.
Recommended order: Units 4, 5, 8, 10, 12. Add Unit 6 if you are writing LinearOpMode autonomous routines.
Estimated time: 12-20 hours.
Checkpoint: you can tune drive directions, choose motor modes intentionally, read encoders, and use IMU heading data without mixing up axes.
If the robot drives perfectly on blocks but poorly on the field, suspect wheel traction, motor direction mismatches, bad center of gravity, or loose mechanical parts before rewriting the whole drivetrain.
Autonomous Lead Path
Goal: coordinate mechanisms, sensors, and timed or state-based autonomous routines.
Recommended order: Units 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, then Unit 15.5.
Estimated time: 18-30 hours.
Checkpoint: you can write nonblocking routines, isolate subsystem classes, reset sensors deliberately, and build a state machine that can be debugged from telemetry.
Autonomous leads should keep a "known good" simple routine in the repo. When the fancy routine breaks at competition, the simple routine protects the team from scoring zero.
Vision and Pathing Path
Goal: use cameras and path following for more reliable autonomous scoring.
Recommended order: Units 12, 14, 15.1, 15.2, 15.3, 15.4, then 15.5.
Estimated time: 16-28 hours, plus robot-specific tuning time.
Checkpoint: you can initialize a camera, validate results before using them, stop streams when appropriate, tune path following from real field tests, and fuse vision corrections only when the data is trustworthy.
- FTC SDK Javadocs: RobotCore
- REV control system docs: REV DUO Control System
- Pedro Pathing docs: Pedro Pathing
- Limelight FTC guide: FTC Java and Blockly Programming Guide
Suggested Weekly Rhythm
The important part is not finishing pages quickly. The important part is that each student can explain what the robot is doing, why the code is structured that way, and what they would check first when it fails.