Clarification on Notebook Rankings for Excellence and Design Award : Robot Events

Clarification on Notebook Rankings for Excellence and Design Award

Dale Nacianceno

25-Jun-2024

Page 17, Guide to Judging:

Key criteria of the Design Award are: • Be at or near the top of Engineering Notebook Rubric rankings with a Fully Developed Notebook. [...]

Page 18, Guide to Judging:

Key criteria of the Excellence Award are: • Be at or near the top of Engineering Notebook Rubric rankings with a Fully Developed Notebook. [...]

Page 27, Guide to Judging:

Fully Developed notebooks are scored and ranked using the Engineering Notebook Rubric. They may be initially ranked according to their rubric scores, then top notebooks can be reranked according to further qualitative evaluation by Judges.

Notebooks can:

Be at or near the top of rubric rankings with no qualitative input.
Be at or near the top of rubric rankings after judges use qualitative input.

For a Team to be nominated for the Excellence or Design Award, do they have to fit scenario 1 or scenario 2?

Answered by Competition Judging Committee

1-Jul-2024

From page 8 of the Guide to Judging, under "Judging Principles". Emphasis added in bold:

Qualitative Judgement - Judges are expected to apply qualitative judgment to award criteria when making final decisions on all Judged Awards. As such, a particular or overall score on a rubric is not an automatic disqualification for any Judged Award. For example, while completing the Engineering Notebook Rubric results in a quantitative score, Judges must still deliberate and apply qualitative judgement when ranking teams to determine the Design Award winner.

From Page 27 of the Guide to Judging, in the Important Note box. Emphasis added in bold:

The Engineering Notebook Rubric is a tool for initial team notebook evaluations through quantitative comparison. The final determination of all award candidates and winners is done through further qualitative deliberation among Judges based on award descriptions and criteria. As such, a team earning a particular or overall score on a rubric is not an automatic disqualification or threshold for any judged award.

The rubric is a tool for helping judges to narrow down candidates and for organizing notes for individual notebooks to assist in the later, qualitative deliberations. Since the qualitative input from judges is used for the final rankings, this is what should be used when determining the final rankings of award candidates.