The Impact of Alternative Methods For Organizing a Notebook : Robot Events

The Impact of Alternative Methods For Organizing a Notebook

Dale Nacianceno

1-Jul-2024

Page 25, Guide to Judging:

ENGINEERING NOTEBOOKS SHOULD CONTAIN THE FOLLOWING ELEMENTS:

[...]

Each page/entry chronologically dated and numbered, starting with the first team meeting

Page 26, Guide to Judging:

Teams may utilize different methods for organizing their Engineering Notebooks. For example, some notebooks may be organized purely chronologically, while others might be organized into subsections based on topic. Depending on the submission format, this may complicate the efforts of Judges to evaluate notebooks. Judges should make every effort to evaluate the contents of the notebook based on the Engineering Notebook Rubric, and not be unduly influenced by the organization methodology chosen by the team, particularly if the submission is not in the native format of the notebook.

There seems to be a discrepancy between the two quotations listed above. Page 25 seems to state that pages should be in chronological order, whereas page 26 seems to state that pages can be in whatever order Teams want. Can clarification be provided regarding alternative organization methods?

Answered by Competition Judging Committee

1-Jul-2024

Engineering Notebook entries should be chronologically dated, but not necessarily chronologically ordered.

For example, if an Engineering Notebook is organized with different sections pertaining to different aspects of the robot design, within each section entries may be chronologically ordered, but the notebook as a whole would not be strictly chronological.