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Unread 11-04-2016, 23:47
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Re: Judge Consistency Between Events

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Originally Posted by philso View Post
Section 6.2 of the Admin Manual gives a list of all the awards.

Highest Rookie Seed is described as "Celebrates the highest-seeded rookie
team at the conclusion of the qualifying rounds" and is selected by "Robot Performance", not the Judges. This is a non-subjective award and the OP's team could not have won this award at Lone Star since they were ranked below the rookie team that did win that award. Probably, the only thing the Judges have to do with this award is high-fiving the winners and possibly helping to write the script for introducing them.

What you have quoted is from Section 6.14.4 which is specifically for the Rookie All-Star Award.
Sorry to be unclear; yes, I was quoting the requirements from the manual for Rookie All-Star in order to clarify that robot performance is only one piece of the equation and it is more about Chairman's-type attributes. It seemed to me that you were saying they should get RAS based on just robot performance, but only Highest Rookie Seed is determined by robot performance alone. I must have misunderstood.

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Unread 11-04-2016, 16:53
Andrew Schreiber Andrew Schreiber is offline
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Re: Judge Consistency Between Events

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Originally Posted by philso View Post
If there is something broken in the Judge Room, it will never be fixed if it is not discussed openly and honestly. Neither the OP nor myself is trying to get them an award after the fact. We are hoping to improve the process.
I'm not saying you are. I'm simply explaining that Judges are NOT allowed to share details about why a team did or did not get an award. I'm concerned that they told the op anything because they aren't supposed to. There's some discussion about how do we get feedback to teams, I'm open to ideas on this.

I can, rather freely explain the general process that goes into judging though. [1] Most of this could easily be gleaned by a careful observer, for other things I'm going to be intentionally vague.

Training

Pit Interviews

Short List

--- I tend to add a another round of Pit Interviews and Short Listing just to get another set of eyes on everyone

More Detailed Interviews

Deliberations [2]

Award Script Writing - NO FREAKING POEMS


I'll work on seeing if I can get a more detailed walk through of the process added to the manual for next year[3]. I don't want the process or what Judges are looking for to be a mystery.


Here's another fun piece of info for you, that deliberations stage is the single hardest part of judging. Know why? Because there's only a handful of awards and number of teams >>> num of awards. Spoiler - we want to give every team an award. Heck [4] worked with a judge who had only heard stories of how awesome FIRST was from Jess [5], she came in and judged at Dartmouth. Well, guess what? her company NOW sponsors a team. Just from talking to students.


Look, I wanna make judging as transparent as possible. I want teams to feel they understand what went into an award decision. But I've been on the other side of someone leaking info from a Judge room. I argued for team B to win over team A. Team A found out... only they only heard "he was arguing against giving you the award". Long story short - it was a crappy experience, I stopped volunteering for a while, nearly quit FIRST it was so crappy. It HAS to be a protected space so that judges can argue without fear of repercussions. I'm not trying to keep the process a secret, only the details.


I'll close with some tips on how to maximize chances of getting a judged award.

- Read https://frcdesigns.com/2015/07/21/5-...n-more-awards/ Kristine is a former Judge Assistant, current Event Chair, and generally awesome person.

- Be prepared, know the award criteria, know what you want to win. Ok, you built some baller vision processing code? Sell the crap outta it, and don't be shy. Go into details! Did you have an issue with a particular filter not working that you worked around? Talk about it. Just remember - some of the judges don't know as much as you do. Explain it to them like they are 5. Plus, that demonstrates you know it.

- Listen to what they are asking you. If the judge is asking about your intake mechanism and you start talking about your FLL teams you are wasting everyone involved's time. Now, if you work in "well, our intake was actually based on the intake our FLL team did last year, I was a mentor on the team. We thought back to that problem and .... " That's bonus points right there. Because now the judge has in their mind that not only is it cool, but when they are discussion RAS/EI they can go "wait, they learned from that and it impacted their performance as a team" THAT is a cool memorable story.

- Have cool memorable stories. How much time do you spend with judges? Ok, now realize they talked to 10 other teams that afternoon. They are overwhelmed with feet per second, shot percentages, OPR, or whatever other technical details. These are people. Talk to them like people. You know what? You have a cool story, you have a favorite part of the bot. Talk about it.

- Don't hand them a binder of crap. A) they have to carry it the rest of the day B) They have to worry about getting it back to you C) Dude, distill this to something I can understand quickly. You know what, it's great you have a record of every shot for any given parameter of your shooter, really, that's cool. But distill it down to an NBA style shot map and it'll stick in the mind a lot better than tables of numbers.

- Talk to them like human beings. No, seriously, MOST judges are just normal folks at the end of the day




[1] Caveat - every JA runs things slightly differently. I'll point out where I differ from what I've seen most folks. There's a lot of good reasons room processes differ but the biggest one is that each group of judges is different.


[2] This is the part I refer to as "chair throwing time"


[3] I don't make the rules, I just make a lot of noise and sometimes things change


[4] And this happened outside the judge room so I can tell this story!


[5] Who is STILL totally at fault for 2Champz /s
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Unread 11-04-2016, 19:31
philso philso is offline
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Re: Judge Consistency Between Events

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Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber View Post
...

Deliberations [2]

...

I'll work on seeing if I can get a more detailed walk through of the process added to the manual for next year[3]. I don't want the process or what Judges are looking for to be a mystery.


Here's another fun piece of info for you, that deliberations stage is the single hardest part of judging. Know why? Because there's only a handful of awards and number of teams >>> num of awards. Spoiler - we want to give every team an award. Heck [4] worked with a judge who had only heard stories of how awesome FIRST was from Jess [5], she came in and judged at Dartmouth. Well, guess what? her company NOW sponsors a team. Just from talking to students.


Look, I wanna make judging as transparent as possible. I want teams to feel they understand what went into an award decision. But I've been on the other side of someone leaking info from a Judge room. I argued for team B to win over team A. Team A found out... only they only heard "he was arguing against giving you the award". Long story short - it was a crappy experience, I stopped volunteering for a while, nearly quit FIRST it was so crappy. It HAS to be a protected space so that judges can argue without fear of repercussions. I'm not trying to keep the process a secret, only the details.

...

[2] This is the part I refer to as "chair throwing time"
I totally understand your concern about the need for the Judging Room to stay private and that there should be no leaks. The fact of the matter is that there was a leak and the content of the leak appears to indicate there are flaws in the judging process. Considering the time, effort and resources that teams commit to this competition, it is unacceptable to be forgotten, just like it would be unacceptable for your professor to tell you that you cannot get a grade because he lost your exam papers.

Once the judging process appears to be unfair, the awards associated with that process cease to be incentives. That undermines the objectives of an otherwise great program and the efforts of people in this community such as the OP, you and I. Rightly or wrongly, there have been whole teams that have left FLL in our area because of awards that were not given out in a rational and transparent way.

Having worked as an FLL Judge quite a few times, I know what you mean about throwing chairs. Sometimes, the Judges get about as passionate advocating for the teams they saw as the teams themselves (I think this is a good thing)

It would be greatly appreciated if you can help improve the manuals and other materials used to train the Judges. Not being a mystery to the competitors would also mean it would be easier for the Judges to be consistent from one event to another and within an event.
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Unread 11-04-2016, 19:57
Andrew Schreiber Andrew Schreiber is offline
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Re: Judge Consistency Between Events

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Originally Posted by philso View Post
I totally understand your concern about the need for the Judging Room to stay private and that there should be no leaks. The fact of the matter is that there was a leak and the content of the leak appears to indicate there are flaws in the judging process. Considering the time, effort and resources that teams commit to this competition, it is unacceptable to be forgotten, just like it would be unacceptable for your professor to tell you that you cannot get a grade because he lost your exam papers.

Once the judging process appears to be unfair, the awards associated with that process cease to be incentives. That undermines the objectives of an otherwise great program and the efforts of people in this community such as the OP, you and I. Rightly or wrongly, there have been whole teams that have left FLL in our area because of awards that were not given out in a rational and transparent way.

Having worked as an FLL Judge quite a few times, I know what you mean about throwing chairs. Sometimes, the Judges get about as passionate advocating for the teams they saw as the teams themselves (I think this is a good thing)

It would be greatly appreciated if you can help improve the manuals and other materials used to train the Judges. Not being a mystery to the competitors would also mean it would be easier for the Judges to be consistent from one event to another and within an event.
Again, I question that the wording used by the judges implied the team was forgotten. More accurately it likely meant that the other team had impressed more folks, or the folks were more adept at swaying others. Or any of a dozen things.

I can assure you that the #1 goal of every JA in FRC is to ensure that every team has a positive experience that they feel was fair. Comments like those judges made undermine that.
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Unread 11-04-2016, 20:14
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Re: Judge Consistency Between Events

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Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber View Post
Again, I question that the wording used by the judges implied the team was forgotten. More accurately it likely meant that the other team had impressed more folks, or the folks were more adept at swaying others. Or any of a dozen things.

I can assure you that the #1 goal of every JA in FRC is to ensure that every team has a positive experience that they feel was fair. Comments like those judges made undermine that.
I am not questioning the integrity of the Judges. I know it is a difficult job for them. I am now also wondering if they were "Miss Universed" because of a simple "clerical error". That would go a long way towards explaining why "their number was not mentioned". This year, the Lone Star FLL Championship Tournament had an issue with a team being disqualified erroneously (different organizers). The error was only discovered after the event had ended.
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Unread 12-04-2016, 06:32
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Re: Judge Consistency Between Events

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Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber View Post
Again, I question that the wording used by the judges implied the team was forgotten. More accurately it likely meant that the other team had impressed more folks, or the folks were more adept at swaying others. Or any of a dozen things.
My thoughts as well. "Your team didn't come up" may mean that the judges that saw your team had another candidate that they thought was better qualified and they presented that team to the rest of the judges.

Here's an example. I've judged in FLL a couple of times. There was a team that was being considered for the Champions Award. Someone noted that the team wasn't nominated for any of the Project awards; does that indicate they were not a well-rounded team? I mentioned that they were on our short list but not at the top and so they weren't mentioned before. They were good; it's just that there were others that were better.
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Unread 11-04-2016, 19:42
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Re: Judge Consistency Between Events

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Originally Posted by philso View Post
I would like to propose that FIRST add "The Judges are active advocates for the teams, not passive observers" in a prominent place to guarantee that the Judge Trainees are sure to see it.
Again, can't comment to FRC, but as a FLL and FTC Judge Advisor, I use training time to clarify this. Deliberations are one of the toughest things and I make sure to tell my judges to "Speak up if there's anything to say".

Quote:
but only had two sentences about the deliberation process and some boxes that say "Determine Top Teams Seen by Each Pair" and "Review and Discuss Top Teams" that only imply that the Judges should advocate for the teams that they saw.
Technically, these are the teams that they should be advocating primarily for because they have the most familiarity with them. Also the second "Review and Discuss Top Teams" doesn't limit them to the ones they saw. To me the two phrases sound like give top teams you saw, and discuss top teams in general.

Quote:
Perhaps a short video might be appropriate since the document I received was already 34 pages long.
Again...all FLL/FTC based.
I vaguely recall a webinar floating around perhaps it was IL specific. This is the crappy part, is that judging has significant effort involved. There's a document, video and webinar that you have to go through. Then the day of the event, you show up early and have a few extra hours of training. Then you rush through the judging in one day. As someone who's brand new to FIRST...this is a tough position to fill in.


Quote:
Frequently, they are first-time Judges...have no real interest in what is going on...are naturally shy and quiet individuals and are overwhelmed when a (group of) loud, enthusiastic and outgoing Judge talks up
These are interesting issues we can try to tackle.

First-time Judges:
There's unfortunately no way around some percentage of first-time Judges. The solution, specifically for Illinois FTC, is two-fold
  1. have enough veteran judges to pair up
  2. give as many opportunities for training as possible (Judging Manual, Webinar/Call 1wk b4, Morning Training)

No Real Interest:
The only way around this is to up our volunteer coordination game. The goal with this is to try and recruit judges at the right time. For Illinois FTC, this just means ensuring our Event Coordinators know this, and it has been getting better. For FRC as far as I can tell, the JA for Midwest Regional seemed really prepared a few months out.

Shy Judges:
Illinois FTC's way of solving this, is to have well trained Judge Advisors. Ensuring equitable deliberation time and moderating the conversation is the role of the JA. They should bring out as much information as they can. BUT they also need to do it quickly and efficiently (a really hard thing). So we have state-trained JAs (just like FRC has HQ-trained JAs) to make sure we get them communicating about their experiences.


Quote:
The hope of winning the awards given out at these events are the carrots that lead the people doing the work to continue doing the work.
I think we've raised in this thread whether it should be the sole carrot. Personally as a mentor, it is not the carrot that leads me to do the work. I would consider not submitting for Chairman's but would not (unless students had really good reasons) stop continuing to host FTC events, mentor FLL teams, and plant tulips at our school. These activities allow me to teach students how to be organized, how to be a leader/mentor, and how we affect our environment/how "it's-not-easy-to-just-plant-tulips".

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If there is something broken in the Judge Room, it will never be fixed if it is not discussed openly and honestly.
The number one issue is that a lot of our first-time judges stay as first-time judges. There's tons of MN threads going on, and a lot of people discussing how volunteer shortage is a big issue. FIRST, as an organization, is like 90% (I want to even say 99%) volunteer-driven and FUNDAMENTALLY relies on its volunteer pool for operation. While I understand that perceived inconsistency is an issue, my point is this we need to determine what is the root and which is more important, more necessary to solve. 1) Bringing greater consistency into judging or 2) ensuring that we continue to have judges, good judges.

For 1) we only have anecdotal evidence, with very many unknowns and a lack of perspectives. In addition, winning awards should not be the end-all for teams. There are probably other team issues that need fixing too. Frankly, what is broken in the Judge Room (at many events) is 2), there's a constant strain on volunteer pool (in some regions), a lack of volunteers, and a lot of last-minute judges.

It's why I'm imploring OP to become a judge. Not only will we get closer to solving 2), but we'll also get more perspectives for 1).

I honestly see no resolution to this particular case. In my view, OP is probably a tired mentor (long season...) and got bummed out his students got bummed out. It sounds like his team worked really hard and was a great rookie contender, and got beat out. It also sounds like his team is going to be striving to kick even more butt in the second year. This is the best resolution I can foresee. His team got beat out by great teams, and he's going to motivate his students to work hard.

Since I still advocate for solving 2), I also hope he takes my advice and tries to judge or convinces others to judge.
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Unread 11-04-2016, 20:05
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Re: Judge Consistency Between Events

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Originally Posted by popnbrown View Post
Again, can't comment to FRC, but as a FLL and FTC Judge Advisor, I use training time to clarify this. Deliberations are one of the toughest things and I make sure to tell my judges to "Speak up if there's anything to say".

...


I think we've raised in this thread whether it should be the sole carrot. Personally as a mentor, it is not the carrot that leads me to do the work. I would consider not submitting for Chairman's but would not (unless students had really good reasons) stop continuing to host FTC events, mentor FLL teams, and plant tulips at our school. These activities allow me to teach students how to be organized, how to be a leader/mentor, and how we affect our environment/how "it's-not-easy-to-just-plant-tulips".

...

Since I still advocate for solving 2), I also hope he takes my advice and tries to judge or convinces others to judge.
It is great that you have a more thorough training process for the Judges. It would be great if more of FIRST could follow your example, especially if it is a matter of saying a few more words. Perhaps you can provide your training materials to the FIRST.

Please be aware that the awards are also used to generate support, financial and otherwise, for the teams from their schools and sponsors, whether or not the team members are truly motivated by those awards.

Yes, being able to recruit more Judges (and other volunteers) and retaining them would make everyone's experience much better, including the Judges and volunteers. Being able to recruit and retain volunteers is a problem that FIRST, like many other volunteer driven organizations, must solve.
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Unread 11-04-2016, 20:10
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Re: Judge Consistency Between Events

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It would be great if more of FIRST could follow your example, especially if it is a matter of saying a few more words. Perhaps you can provide your training materials to the FIRST.
I feel like I'm in an experimental stage, and there are certainly flaws to my proposal. So as they get worked out they will surely be shared with FIRST, but a lot of the inspiration was from current judging processes from FIRST. Really..it's just been localized.

Quote:
Please be aware that the awards are also used to generate support, financial and otherwise, for the teams from their schools and sponsors, whether or not the team members are truly motivated by those awards.
I'm well aware, and I do think there's merit to having awards be a motivation. I just want to raise the point that it shouldn't be the only or primary motivation.
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Unread 11-04-2016, 14:53
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Re: Judge Consistency Between Events

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Rule 1 in the Judge Room is "what happens in the Judge Room stays there"
Rule number 1 we don't talk about judge club?
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Unread 10-04-2016, 19:34
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Re: Judge Consistency Between Events

First off, congratulations on getting through your first season! I hope it wasn't too exhausting and your team is excited for a second season!

I want to preface this by saying, I've never been a judge for FRC so I don't know the process. I have been both a student and a mentor. I do have extensive experience with judging for FLL and FTC, so I'll try to draw that in as well.

Consistency in subjectivity is really really hard. Unfortunately, the awards are subjective. I base that on the description of the awards themselves, the competition for that award (ie. The teams at the event), and most importantly the ever changing human component. Not only the judges as the human component, but the students and mentors also involved.

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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