Quote:
Originally Posted by popnbrown
I understand the students are upset and that you see that there should be more consistency. But even if we were able to get over the logistical nightmare of having judges noted be communicated across events, there's still subjectivity of the event itself. And I think it would not be in the program's interest to ask judges to value other notes over their own observations.
I hope I'm not coming off aggressively. I think you're being very calm and collected so I want to approach the same way.
The problem you present is basically this, how can we turn something inherently subjective into something more objective? It's something I've been interested in for a long time, especially as a participant. But what I've come to realize is to solve that problem we really have to ask why does the answer matter?
That's been a question for me for the past two years as I've transitioned into becoming a Lead Mentor...the lead "guidance" for a bunch of teenagers. And what I've discovered is that while my students may be motivated to win awards, it's my responsibility to ensure they stay motivated, if they win and award, if they don't win, if they get screwed out of one. Rather than trying to figure out what is the fairest way to give the award, my highest priority is ensuring my students continue to learn, work hard and be proud of their failures and successes.
This isn't to say that I don't entertain the thought of how to continue to improve the award system. I think a program that doesn't self analyze and seek to improve will stagnate. But my priorities are not on figuring out awards.
Anyways, sort of back on subject I highly suggest you give a whirl with judging if you have not already to see how you can improve consistency.
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I agree. I know it's not an easy task and I don't want to make the judges job harder than it already is. Lone Star was short on judges this past weekend so I'm sure all the judges were doing double duty with talking to teams for various awards. My intentions of this thread were to generate a discussion (which it has) on how can we make the judges jobs easier and make it where if you go to an event, the judging feels the same from event to event. We got one set of judges on Friday and then three to four sets on Saturday within a 30-45 minute interval. It seemed strange but we assumed they were just really busy because of the amount of teams that were there.
To your point about making sure the kids learn and work hard, that's the main principle of our team. We did a lot of teaching this year and the kids learned a lot. They worked hard on their own and I think that's because of the FIRST community and the teams they interacted with. Seeing what those teams and other teams accomplished, they knew they could attempt to do the same thing and it really showed. They were proud of the success they made and everyone of my students said they enjoyed it all. They are excited about next year and are already looking forward to off season events.
Also, I would love to judge. I just love mentoring too much.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber
Fourth - not bringing up name can mean a lot of things in a lot of contexts. But I have some slightly bigger concerns - Rule 1 in the Judge Room is "what happens in the Judge Room stays there" There's a lot of reasons for this, but this thread is exactly one of them.
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I completely agree. We weren't expecting to receive that information. At the same time, I'm not criticizing the judges at this event. I personally feel that they worked really hard and made the best choices they could. For all we know, they could have had a discussion and we just didn't make the cut. Of course we feel like we should have because of our previous Rookie Inspiration win at Bayou but at the same time, we don't know what the other rookie teams presented and we can't say we are better than them. We talked to majority of the rookies at Lone Star and they were all very good and qualified for the awards. I also don't intend for this thread to be taken the wrong way. I just wanted to generate some discussion on this topic. I still fully respect the judges decision and believe they took the time to make the right choice.