OK, being a rookie team, I’ve got a question about the judging for awards during the championships. During our Regionals, there were judges all over us, stopping at the pit continuously throughout both days. We won Rookie All Star, and I can see how we had a shot at it, with all of the exposure to al of the judges. In Atlanta, the only judges that stopped by our pit were (2) together, in the first hour of the first day (Friday.) Is that normal? 
The students who talked to them told me that they were non-technical judges. How do you get technical judges to stop by? Or do you have to do extremely well with the first set, for more to stop by? I would appreciate other teams’ experiences with this. How many stopped by your pits?
We only had a few stop by our pits, as well. I believe that they assign two judges to each award for each division (don’t quote me on that). Since you were a rookie team, they were probably interviewing you for Rookie Inspiration/All-Star.
The judges are told which teams to interview, and they go to those teams only. If you were not “nominated” for a technical award, they would not have come to your pits to talk to you about technical things.
Don’t quote me on this–it’s just my understanding on the way it works, and I could be wrong. Perhaps someone else could enlighten us.
As far as I know, Alexa is right. You are basically re-judged for the awards you’ve won at other Regional Events.
I, personally, don’t agree with this. While, sure, some awards are best judged this way (you’re not likely to change your control board or the sleek design feature of your machine), lots of other things change. Take for example, the J&J Sportsmanship Award. Who’s to say a team that DIDNT win it at a Regional hasn’t stepped up for the Championship? And who’s to say that a Rookie team that DIDNT win an award shouldn’t be eligible for one at the Championship?
This is correct, and it’s nothing personal against you guys, it’s just when you have one day to interview many teams and pick the finest from your division, you have to work efficiently. :]
If this is true (that you’re re-judged for awards you’ve already won), then that is quite surprising to me. Last year, we won a Regional Chairman’s award, as well as a Regional Delphi “Driving Tomorrow’s Technology” Award. However, two of the judges came to our pits in Atlanta and told us that we were nominated for the enterpreneurship award. I’m not sure if this was so that they could judge all aspects of our team for the Chairman’s or not, but I found this quite interesting.
I do not believe you are correct in saying that only the teams who won Regional awards get “re-judged”. The judges collectively are supposed to look at all teams as candidates, though they have an extremely short amount of time to visit teams. All judges do not see all teams.
If they were going to judge based only on winning regional awards, then this should be written in the game manual by FIRST as to who is eligible for awards. But at this time, I do not believe that’s how it’s intended to work.
Out of curiousity, has anyone done a cross-reference to see if all champ award winners were also regional winners for that award? (obviously Chairmans is). I’d venture to guess they aren’t.
I know for a fact they aren’t. Our team is evidence. We won the Motorola Quality Award at the Championship, but had not previously won it at a regional. I don’t know how it works, really.
I did a quick check and you are correct. Most teams that won an award at least won a similar award at regionals. However 1026 won sportsmanship without winning any awards at their only regional. Team 79 won creativity without winning any technical awards at their regionals. 79 definitely deserved creativity for their pickup mechanism, so I’m glad that they didn’t limit who was eligible.
So is there any “official” posted protocol of how judging works? The whole thing is still a mystery to me.
How about a scoring rubric? Most quality competitions/ events that I/my kids have participated in have given you the rubric, so that you knew what would be judged.
Other than the basic info already provided, there really isn’t a posted protocol, and probably for good reason. The criteria/meaing for awards is outlined in the game manual, and that is what the judges look for. Any other detail that could be provided about how judging works could just cause a lot more havoc. We think we have issues with teams going overboard and doing things specifically to win awards already? (i.e. safety) I can only imagine what could happen if judges outline exactly the items they were looking for. There really is no other way to outline it other than what’s in the game manual. It’s just a matter of what “hits” them when talking to teams and how well they fit the award description.
There really is no specific detailed 1.2.3… items that they look for (aside from obvious things that blatant parts of the award description). They are coached on what each award means, they talk to the teams, and then in their judgement choose the team which best represents what the award stands for. FIRST awards really are not “you must have items A, B, and C for X, Y, Z points to win” type of awards. This isn’t exactly the same as a science project, rube goldberg machine, or other quantitative results-oriented competition.
The judging process isn’t always perfect, but I personally would not like to see a scorecard publicly issued for each award.
The only rubric that I know of is the one for the website award. All the requirements for the other awards are outlined in the manual, but it’s not entirely clear.
In addition to results from previous regionals, the judges have a copy of the yearbook page for each team.
This page should be completed by each team in the TIMS system. It describes the team, team goals, awards the team thinks they are competitive for and other information.
Like Amy said, the worst thing that could happen is for teams to get a checklist of things to do to earn a certain award. That would clearly hurt the spirit of the judging and award process as teams created a checklist of item a, b, and c to complete. I think some awards are open to the judges interpretation and can be slightly different from event to event based on the background and expertise of the judging panel.
It is important for your team to know what awards you might be a contender for, and to have people ready, knowledgeable and eager to talk to the judges. If you don’t know what award you could be a candidate for, how could the judges know?
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I completely understand the judges don’t have a lot of time to talk with teams, but that’s no reason why some teams should see NO judges at all. Take this how you want, but I’m going to use my own team as an example just because its a situation I know about. 1675 struggled through the regionals…new designs, new features, etc. Everything clicked in Atlanta though and the robot finally worked how it was originally intended to. Would we have been a serious contender for any of the technical awards? Probably not…but it sure would have been nice if the kids would have gotten a chance to tell the team’s story to someone in a blue shirt. We had a pair of judges come to our pit, give us a sticker, and say “we’ll be back” - and they never did come back.
Either get more judges for Atlanta, or only judge the previous winners (not a big fan of that solution)…or decrease the total number of teams.
Kev
You know how many judges there are this year? 90. Last year? 70. Things are being done, but these are professionals in their industry, many take personal time off to do this. Not saying we should be grateful for what they give us no matter what, just that it’s not easy to get large amounts of judges.