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Unread 26-04-2010, 14:58
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Re: Chairman's Award -- is the bar too high now?

Something tells me the source of concern regarding CA is not the fact that the 'bar has been raised' for the national CA award. I have a feeling that it's FIRST's lack of feedback to those who submit CA at the regional level, and lack of genuine thankfulness to the teams for their efforts year after year even though they didn't win any awards for it. The feedback form for CA is a joke some years -- in 2 of the 4 years we were eligible for CA, the feedback form simply regurgitated what the students presented.

If FIRST really wanted to turn CA into a less competitive vehicle to further spread the message, they could send CA-submitting teams letters that explain how to further the specific efforts that teams have already put forth so that those efforts are more inline with FIRST's overall mission. The purpose of such a letter wouldn't be to aid a team or tell a team what they did wrong at competition to not win CA, but rather to begin providing teams with constructive feedback in a more focused manner. I also believe it would open up communicative channels so that the actual award is administered more evenly across regionals.

Statistically, if nationwide 50% of teams do outreach and then present it at a regional, then as it stands currently only 11% of them are even recognized for it (50 regionals * 2 awards / 900 teams, with some rounding and estimation).
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Last edited by JesseK : 26-04-2010 at 15:03. Reason: forgot to address the inadequacies of the CA feedback form
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