Excellence Criteria - Middle School vs. High School

VEX Robotics Competition Discussion VRC > Previous Games
1

As a new mentor I just came across this:

Criteria to Qualify for World Championship Excellence Award Consideration:

  • Must have created a submission for at least 1 online design challenge

My daughter’s team wasn’t told this by her teacher or mentors. A lot of her teammates (they’re a middle school team) don’t have internet access at home, or, if they do, they have very restricted access by their parents to be able to find out things like this and post submissions. Middle school kids aren’t nearly as independent as high school kids and I’m wondering if this was taken into consideration when creating these requirements?

A number of other middle school Excellence winners from this season I’ve spoken to aren’t aware of this requirement or the Feb. 13th deadline they missed. I’d be willing to bet that if you look at the number of online design challenge submissions and compare it to the number of teams coming to Worlds, you’d see a huge discrepancy, especially among middle school teams. Which means a number of teams who may truly embody Excellence on and off the playing field won’t even be considered.

Now that the deadline for online design challenges has past, they can’t be considered for the Excellence award even though they meet all the other criteria and are a strong team. It doesn’t seem fair that the requirements are the same for middle school teams and high school teams, and that her team (and others) can’t be considered for Excellence because they have to rely solely on their teacher to know all these requirements and then tell them about them. Any chance there’s a way to rectify the justness of this? :confused:

Further thought leads me to wonder about teams from countries other than the US who may have significantly more restricted access to the internet…:frowning:

2

It’s also a problem since many teams did not qualify until after the date.

3

It’s disappointing that someone from VEX hasn’t given any reply to this forum thread. Being a high school and middle school mentor, I know firsthand the differences between the two types of teams, and I understand and agree with the concerns laid out here about the Excellence award criteria. The middle school teams often feel like they’re seen as second-class and yet they are the future of the sport.

4

well, IMO the REAL excellent teams do the online challenge because they think its fun and a good way to promote/teach other teams how to do something
if a team does the “criteria” just because they want to win the excellence award, then i think the incentive might not be the reason VEX gives the excellence award to…

5

On behalf of the Foundation, please be assured that we read and pay attention to these posts.

One comment, though, is that middle school and high school coaches and mentors are the ones who receive information from us about awards. This is not something we expect students to find on their own. Nearly 90 people and teams entered the Online Challenges this year, and many of them were middle schools. Running a team is a challenge that uses lots of time, energy, and (sometimes) money. To most teams, the Online Challenges are an optional program that exceeds a team’s ability to do more, and that’s fine. Our feeling, though, is that the best teams in the World should be expected to do more than the average team.