So in case anyone hasn’t noticed, there’s now a requirement for all Dean’s List nominees to give a live interview either in person, over the phone, or through video conference (section 6.6.3 of the Administrative Manual). Does anyone know anything outside of what the manual says about it? How we’re supposed to contact the judges about this (since it says the nominees can be interviewed beforehand) or what kinds of things the nominees need to be prepared to talk about?
According to this FRC Update:
http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/2014-FIRST-Choice-Update
“Teams with nominees will be contacted once details have been worked out for their particular events.”
So, I think the interviews will be figured out as the season progresses and submissions roll in.
I’m not sure why they cant just do this at the event itself with students being asked to sign up for an interview time, much like the RCA?
Seems like more work for everyone, especially volunteer judges now spending more than a 3 day weekend volunteering.
I know in quoting the venues for this years events, they added an additional interview room requirement. So my guess would be most events will work to have interviews at the event.
I’m sure most regions(I know MAR and NEFIRST are) will be doing then at the event, but the allowance of phone/Skype interviews is probably there just as a provision in case a nominated student absolutely can’t make it to the event.
I believe the intent is to do most of the interviews at the event in person. However, FIRST is trying to include sufficient flexibility should a nominated student not be able to make the event. I know it’s unlikely that someone dedicated enough to be nominated would skip their team’s regional, but I can see it as possible if there is another important commitment (For example, something to do with college admittance).
Imagine a 40 team event with two candidates each, if you interview for 5 minutes and do a 5 minute for notes, 800 minutes, that’s over 13 hours of interviews… A pretty daunting task for the judges I think.
Richard,
when we attended the FIRST Summit in late June, we had heard of the plans to interview students the following school year.
I believe it was told to us that it would only occur at CMP.
Now it seems as though it will be at every FRC regional/district event as well.
Given the daunting task of interviewing everyone, why not just follow the same process as before, but instead have the judges select the top 3-5 (arbitrary no.) to interview, then select the 2 winners.
Just my 2 cents…
It is a daunting task, but the interview process should provide a valuable experience for the students. Most students in high school haven’t been through a serious interview like this, where they’re asked to relate experiences, knowledge, and basically sell themselves (interviewing to work the counter at McDonalds really doesn’t count!).
I agree with the valuable learning experience.
My concern lies with the interview process itself, along with finding volunteers who are willing to spend more days on it. I’m not feeling the whole remote interview thing.
This whole thing is pretty daunting to me, and I’m not even being nominated! This seems like a lot of stress to put on the judges. I agree that it’s beneficial to both the judges and the students, but it sounds like it crosses the line between “useful” and “overbearing.”
I think your idea has merit, maybe narrow to top 10 and interview them. I also used a 5 minute interview which would be short and didn’t account for breaks.
Worst case scenario is challenging, hopefully we will be somewhere fewer than 80 submissions at IE!
I have yet to see exact numbers across the nation, but from what I recall, a few of the events we looked at in working on this for NE had fewer than 30% submission rate. They have also set it up so that teams only submit their DL applicant to one event. So with many teams going to multiple events, you can probably guesstimate that each event probably has fewer than 25% of it’s teams submitting. I think that works out to something like roughly 22 students to interview (if you assume a 45 team average at an event). With a 10 minute cycle (5 min interview, 5 min in/out/notes time for judges) thats 220 minutes, or 3.67 hours… So you can see that in most cases if you allocate 2 judges across a full day, there actually is plenty of time.
Now the value of talking to a student for only 5 minutes is more a question in my mind, but I believe the idea is to just get a concept of if the student really matches the essay submitted for them… or is the mentor group just a really great set of writers?
Of course I would LOVE to see the day where every team submitted two applicants, but the reality is the current numbers seem to support that adding two judges and one room to each event will yield enough time for DL interviews.