Rookie coach of team 6802 here again with another question.
How does judging work at FRC competitions? With FTC we always had formal judging interviews in the morning and then judges would visit with teams in the pits and observe matches throughout the day.
I know there are a few awards that need to be submitted for prior to competition, but what about the ones that do not need a prior submission, such as the rookie awards. When will students be expected to interact with judges? Do they have a scheduled judging time?
Any other advice on preparing for judging at competition would be appreciated!
Judges (wearing blue shirts) will randomly come into your pit and either observe or ask questions, so your students should be prepared to answer them. It won’t be like FTC where you have formal interviews (except for Chairman’s, Dean’s List which is individual, etc). I’d recommend having materials like the FTC engineering notebook available to show them. It doesn’t have to be as formal as that, but having some documentation of your process is always good. If you are trying to go for Innovation in Control then you will want something talking about your programming. Maybe designate a student who is very knowledgeable to be the primary contact, and a couple of secondary ones. They should ALWAYS be in your pit.
The only scheduled judging times are for the Chairman’s Award presentation and for students nominated for the Dean’s List. Those are only applicable if you apply for Chairman’s or have a student nominated for DL. Both of those involve signing up for a judging time at pit admin.
For the rest, judges circulate around the pits talking to teams throughout the event. So, you won’t know when they’ll come by. You’ll want someone in the pit ready to talk to judges the whole time. Typically they’ll come around in pairs, ask questions, talk to the kids, and then move on. You can have more than one group of judges come by, so don’t assume you’re done after the first set leaves!
The others have pretty much covered it, but I’ll emphasize that you need to keep at least one student in the pit pretty much all day Fri who is knowledgeable and prepared to talk to the judges. A hand out of some sort is also a good idea to make you memorable when the judges are locked away in their deliberation room.
When the Judges stop by as a Mentor I always leave the pit, unless we are in the middle of a serious repair that the students need direction on.
Definitely do give something to the Judges to help them remember your team. It should include details about the outstanding features that your students will be talking about. There may have been a local case of an award going to the wrong team due to similarities in their team numbers.
If your team is small, it may be necessary to ask the Judges to return when the Subject Matter Experts return.
A very good point that deserves to be repeated. If the student currently being questioned does not know the subject matter of the question it is far better to say “I don’t know, I worked on X, let me get you the person that did Y”
I had an experience where a student on local powerhouse teams who clearly did not work on the robot try to explain a feature and “had the physics backwards”. We just politely thanked him and went back later to find someone who did understand the feature. If we had been the Judges…
You would have had a time crunch because the scheduling for Judges is actually fairly tight. I always used to try to get two rounds of judging in for each grouping of awards (i.e. 4 sets of judges come by) for every team but I couldn’t always manage it.
Couple quick suggestions on successful judge interactions:
Judges are people, they have limited attention spans and chances are they’ve talked to 10 other teams. Understand that.
Judges have a job to do, they have information they need to get. If they ask you to tell them about your robot and you start talking about your FLL pipeline without establishing it as key to your robot design? Yeah…
Judges are there in part as STEM ambassadors, you SHOULD be asking them questions, that’s why they are there. This helps the Judge Advisor because, frankly, it hooks the judges and they want to come back. And it helps the teams because guess what, they are people. People remember positive interactions.
Do NOT hand the judges a 50 page handout on your robot. It’ll get dumped in a box in the Judge room then the poor judge assistant has to cart that box out pit admit to return all that. Or it gets recycled with the rest of the insane amount of paper that gets used in judging.
Handouts ARE useful but only if you limit them to a page or two MAX. And picture heavy is important. They are to jog the memory. Bonus, they work well to help keep students on talking points when they get flustered.
Dead air is painful but so is not being able to get a question in. You want to answer the question the judge asks and then lead them to the next question you want to answer. But if they have something specific they are asking about work with them.
Oh, lastly, and most importantly. The criteria for the awards are in the manual. Pick a Team Attribute award and a Machine Attribute award as a team, identify the criteria, and develop talking points around it. Judges are looking at those criteria when deliberating (throwing chairs), make their lives easier.
Also I HATE to have to put this down but I’ve witnessed it at events, if you feel a judge is asking questions they shouldn’t (“what did the students do while the mentors built this robot” or similar) your first step should be to find the Judge Advisor. Any COMPETENT JA will want to know this is going on. If you can’t find the JA find the RD or District Chair. If none of these are around fill out a non medical incident report at Pit Admin.
I’ll also likely diverge from a lot of other mentors (and maybe other judges/judge advisors) and say I’d almost prefer if mentors stayed in the pit when students are talking to Judges. It gives the students a bit of reassurance that if they get nervous they have someone they trust they can lean on a bit, it gives them a bit of feedback, and frankly, no judge SHOULD care if there is a mentor in the pit. Mentors are there to work with students, this program is a partnership and that is part of what is judged.
Be careful, judges don’t always have time to return to your pit. Be prepared and take advantage of the time the judge does come by. At least have something printed the judges can take away.
One of the reasons I suggest that mentors step out of the pit is so that they are not tempted to answer the judge’s questions. I’ve seen too many cases were the mentors end up doing more talking than the students. No judge should care if a mentor is in a pit but I certainly do hope that they care if the mentor ends up dominating the interview.
Some of it comes down to knowing your particular students, how well they are prepared, and the relationship between the student and mentor. For some students they may feel more comfortable w/o a mentor present, while others will be more comfortable with a trusted mentor by their side.
Absolutely, if you as a mentor feel it’s better for the student the judge won’t care. All I was pointing out was that there’s benefits to both sides of it and it’s absolutely fine either way.
Stepping out of the pit means out of conversational range. If you are ten feet away the kids won’t feel entirely abandoned. It’s fun to watch them interact with the judges…one of the enjoyable aspects of being a mentor.
We specifically designate spokespersons to be “on duty” Thurs and Fri.
Another point, and maybe not for everyone. I tell kids that at tournament time they should assume that judges might always be watching. Sure, they are chatting with the team across the aisle but if you are being unsafe/goofy/etc enough to be noticed…you will be. Not that it has been a big issue but we just feel the team needs to be “on” the entire time they are in the venue.
We ask them to address judges as “sir” or Ma’am", and refer to mentors as Mr./Mrs/Ms etc in conversations with judges.
Mentors should just stay out of the pit unless needed for major crisis. I think this year we will have a small taped section on the floor off in one corner marked “Mentor stands here!”. It’s their show not ours at that point.
Different philosophies work for different teams. I like to be around when judges are in our pit so I can do whatever the students tell me they need done. Like if they start to talk about a feature on our robot and want the spare mechanism to demonstrate it or want to tether up the robot. I don’t want students interrupting the short time they get with judges digging through a bin looking for parts or waiting on a laptop to connect and losing the judges attention. It also gives me a chance to listen in so I can give them feedback later even if it’s just a “great job”. I stay silent unless spoken to, and the rare occasion I am spoken to I respond with something like “so and so can talk to about that” and drag a student in.
Make sure all your parents and mentors understand that it’s the students show. Judges don’t want to hear from a non-student. Well meaning parents/mentors will turn the judges off.
Judges like shinny stuff. One team last year was giving out neckties with gears stenciled on them in the pit.
Don’t try and bribe the Chairman’s judges. Any giveaways should be done from the pit.
Most important is to have fun. If the students are excited, the enthusiasm will be remembered by the judges and much as what was said.
There are many good points, teams can use this information and see what works good for them. As some one mentioned there are no blanket rules. There are no rules given to judges (at least as far as I know) and the process is all subjective. Judges are human beings and they have their own views and opinions and most of them keep these asides and judge teams based on teams “performance” during judging process.
Team members can be proactive and talk about their team, their robot etc. If you know judges are technical, talk about your design process, prototypes and technical challenge you had and how it was resolved. Judges like to hear WHYs, like if you have used LIDAR sensors, tell them why it was important to for you to use it. In most cases they want to know the reason behind your action. If you done anything unique, especially automation related. Same goes for business/marketing side.
One important thing to remember is that pits are noisy, sometimes judges have hard time hearing when bunch of people standing close by are chatting and laughing. Try to keep pit tidy and when judges come to pit, unless you have major issue that needs fixing immediately, give space for judges to walk around and inspect the robot. Team members who are not participating in the discussion can step back so judges can see, hear and know what team has accomplished. Judges like to hear from students and know what they have learnt and sometimes they want to know and appreciate mentors.
Its team’s responsibility to convince a judge that they deserve an award.
Judges are given rules. There is a handbook it exists. There are listed criteria for each award. You have a copy of them on the first website. I can’t tell you if the judge manual matches them exactly but I can say it’s a darn good start to read the award criteria in the rules.
They are open to interpretation but those are the criteria.
This is not my opinion. This is a statement of fact based on judging at well north of a dozen events across multiple levels of competition and across the continental United States as well as Judge Adviser training.
Andrew, I agree with you that Tungrus was incorrect about the existence of rules pertaining to judging, but to state the the post in its entirety is wildly incorrect is hyperbole.
Using the STAR method to discuss design choices to robot attribute judges or how you developed outreach strategy to team attribute judges can be very beneficial*. I also think the point about removing useless chatter when judges are around can be helpful.
*Do not have a STAR script for every award memorized by the pit students, let the humanity show through.