Robotics Education & Competition Foundation
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2190: Changes to Notebook Criteria in Mid Season Updates.


JHAWK
12-Oct-2024

Hello,

At the beginning of the High Stakes season, the notebook rubric read as follows:

Team shows evidence of independent inquiry from the beginning stages of their design process.

However, during the summer, and additional portion was added:

Team shows evidence of independent inquiry from the beginning stages of their design process. Notebook documents whether the implemented ideas have their origin with students on the team, or if students found inspiration elsewhere.

Finally, the student centered guidelines were updated mid season to state that the following information should be included in citations:

Title of resource or source code Author(s) Date of publication or release Version (if applicable) Location (where to find the source)

While many teams have been doing citation previously, should students be counted off points on the rubric and/or be reported for violations of student centered guidelines for entries before the update that do not contain citations and/or citations at the level listed in the student centered guidelines? Should any difference be made when comparing physical vs digital notebooks as it may be impossible for physical notebooks to be updates to meet the new guidelines (due to not having room on the physical page for the additional information).

Thank you for your time

Answered by Competition Judging Committee
14-Oct-2024

The June 2024 update to the Guide to Judging included a new section explaining Academic Honesty and the importance of properly citing source materials or ideas.

Regardless of notebook format or the dates of notebook entries, all notebooks should be held to the same standards outlined in the Guide to Judging. Improvements in the quality of notebooking entries are expected over the course over the season. Notebooks should not be predominantly judged based on subset of entries, but rather the notebook as a whole.

While the rubric as well as Student-Centered policy documents were updated for clarification, these updates did not change the underlying principles outlined in the Engineering Notebook: Purpose and Academic Honesty" section of the Guide to Judging.