Supplemental materials : Robot Events

Supplemental materials

Gina Wade (Event Partner)

4-Sep-2024

On page 14 of the Guide to Judging, Judge Advisors are advised to "Confirm with the Event Partner that judging staff will have all appropriate and current judging materials and documents, including team lists and match sheets from the event’s Tournament Manager operator. These documents cannot be modified or replaced with unofficial versions." (bolding mine)

Is the supplementation of official documents with forms created by a JA allowable so long as such documents are used in conjunction with the original documents? Is there a point where supplementation is unacceptable? The following are examples of supplemental documents I've seen.

A flowchart reminding judges of the steps to conducting the interview, questions that the judge team has agreed upon, how to conclude the interview, and which official forms to fill out after the interview.
A rubric created by the JA for second interviews that lists the criteria for the specific award and place to score each criteria.
A rubric created by a JA for second interviews with suggested questions for specific awards and a place to score each answer to those questions.
A reference sheet breaking down the notebook rubric language, providing examples of what might constitute a minimal entry and what might be a fully developed entry, and listing some scoring considerations to use when differentiating teams.

Answered by Competition Judging Committee

9-Sep-2024

Is the supplementation of official documents with forms created by a JA allowable so long as such documents are used in conjunction with the original documents? Is there a point where supplementation is unacceptable?

We anticipate that some Judge Advisors will create supplementary documents specific for their events. In some cases, this makes sense and assists the judging process at the event. In other cases, these supplementary documents may fundamentally change how judging is conducted, which would not be permitted.

Let us examine your examples in order:

A flowchart reminding judges of the steps to conducting the interview, questions that the judge team has agreed upon, how to conclude the interview, and which official forms to fill out after the interview.

This would be permitted, as it does not change how judging is conducted.

A rubric created by the JA for second interviews that lists the criteria for the specific award and place to score each criteria.

A rubric created by a JA for second interviews with suggested questions for specific awards and a place to score each answer to those questions.

These would not be permitted, as followup interviews are meant to be qualitative and not tied to any specific rubric scores. The use of such rubrics that are not public to teams also creates transparency issues - we do not permit the creation of rubrics beyond what is publicly available to teams in the Guide to Judging for this reason.

A reference sheet breaking down the notebook rubric language, providing examples of what might constitute a minimal entry and what might be a fully developed entry, and listing some scoring considerations to use when differentiating teams.

This also would not be permitted. As described, this is functionally an additional rubric for the Engineering Notebook.

Speaking very broadly, the reason for the prohibition of custom rubrics and scoring documents is to help provide consistency in judging across events in our programs. Both volunteers and teams have the same official resources available to them. While the specifics of judging individual teams must not be made public, having all judging documents public provides a level of transparency for the judging process for all participants.