Posted on the FRC Blog, 1/22/15: http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/blog-chairmans-award-feedback
Chairman’s Award Feedback
**Blog Date: **Thursday, January 22, 2015 - 09:20
In this blog I announced changes to the feedback teams submitting for the Chairman’s Award would receive this season. We have received some feedback about these changes, from individual teams as well as our Hall of Fame teams, expressing concern about the lack of written feedback for teams this year. It’s fair to raise questions about this. Eliminating the written feedback was a judgment call we made based on several factors. We believe, on balance, we have made the right decision, so we will be continuing with the current plan for 2015. However, we are considering this change to be a pilot for this season, and we will be surveying the teams afterwards, on this specific change and others we made related to the Chairman’s Award, to see if additional changes need to be made in 2016.
Our Chief Judge Advisors, Cindy Stong and Allen Bancroft, offered to write a note for this blog expressing their thoughts about this. I accepted their offer. Please see their note below:
The judges want to give some insight to our decision to do a pilot to eliminate Chairman Award written feedback for the 2015 season…
We’ve seen some phenomenal growth in the quantity and quality of team applications for Regional / District Chairman Awards and Championship Chairman Awards (CA). We’ve allowed multiple opportunities to interview for CA which greatly benefits teams, and historically Judges have provided written feedback to teams regarding their interview. However, we have seen many issues with these feedback forms, including students who are very upset by the feedback given. In order to provide teams with feedback that is effective and most useful, we will offer the following ways teams can get feedback for the 2015 season…
We believe that our CA judges’ time is much better spent listening to the CA presentation and asking clarifying questions of students, and we believe that there are so many great resources available for teams seeking to improve their chances to earn the Chairman’s Award.
Here are some great changes to the 2015 Chairman’s Award judging process that teams should find beneficial:
Your team will get an extra 2 minutes in the CA room with the judges for extra presentation.
*(This allows you more wonderful opportunity to share the great things you are doing towards spreading the value of FIRST)
*
We will continue to allow a mentor into the CA interview room for silent observation.(This is huge – what better feedback than having your mentor, who knows you so well, listen not only to what your team is saying but especially to the questions the judges are asking. These questions are the best feedback you will ever get. Your mentors know your team and are able to give you objective and accurate feedback. Please encourage your mentor to be in the room!)
We will review and add to our existing CA resources, such as update the CA resources webpage and hold live calls and webinars with CA Judges.
(We will continue to offer live calls where you can hear directly from Championship CA judges who have years of CA judging experience. These judges have seen so many great teams and they have a lot of insight to offer.)
Teams learn best from each other.
(Your team can learn so much from the Hall of Fame teams, from other ‘team’ resources [for example I watched the two hour Simbotics video on Chairman’s and I learned so much!], and from each other. And we are creating a way for teams to share official CA videos and practice interview videos with each other.)
Good luck this year to all of the many teams doing FIRST! And take advantage of the increased opportunity to get real-time feedback from your judges and feedback from each other.
Sincerely,
Your FRC Chief Judge Advisors,
Cynthia Stong and Allen Bancroft
Please be sure to carefully review Section 6.4 of the FRC Admin Manual for all the rules around the Chairman’s Award. There have been some important changes for 2015!
I want to thank Cindy and Allen (FRC Volunteers of the Year winners at the 2014 *FIRST *Championship, by the way) for their continued dedication to the program and tremendous work in guiding our judging process through some significant changes over the last few years. We couldn’t have done it without them!
Frank