Quote:
Originally Posted by wilsonmw04
You are actually ok with the complete removal of feed back? I have never given or received any sort of evaluation without some sort of feedback mechanism. If the only feed back a team get is the winner's "project," I fear the a lot of innovation will be removed from the "solutions" that earned Chairman's. Without some sort of constructive criticism, all projects will begin to look alike and a RCA arms race will ensue. Team X mentored 25 FLL teams? We need to do 35 next year! Oh, Team Y (not the Y team) did X at the Uber California regional, let's do that same thing here!
How do I know this, Matt? That seems awfully cynical.
Because I do project based learning in my classroom on a regular basis. Every year I get the same thing from students: "Do you have any examples of a good project?" "What does a good project look like?" One year I caved in and I gave them a few good examples. At the end of the project the vast majority of them were copies of those "example" projects. It was really disheartening.
Without proper rubrics and feedback, teams will go with what they think works. This means more and more submissions will look more and more alike.
|
I could not agree more this this sentiment.
(1) I agree that poor or inconsistent feedback is better than no feedback at all. It seems like working to improve the feedback would be a better goal than eliminating the feedback entirely. In particular it allows you to see what you are effectively communicating and what is getting lost in translation. You might be doing a great job as a team but not communicating that to the judges. In fact when we won RCA a few years ago we were told that some of the judges knew we had been doing a lot for a few years, but they had been waiting for us to communicate it to them. That's when we won.
How can you determine that kind of feedback from watching the presentations of other teams??
(2) I agree that taking winning examples of presentations will simply generate more nearly identical presentations both in content and scope. The Chairman's Award needs to be about how an individual team brings Science and FIRST to their community in their own way... it is not how you re-interpreted team X's way to working with their community. FIRST is about innovation. No feedback = formulaic outreach.
Even though the feedback we received from our presentations last year was uneven between the events and on some level confusing, it still helped us to improve our communication.
Please bring back the feedback. It is how we learn.
And add the posting of the winners essays, videos, and presentations. It is how we are inspired.