Why does vex keep how notebooks are graded so confidential? By “gatekeeping” these scores people wont have the ability to understand what they did wrong. Isn’t this program about people learning and improving?
Further issues would be how people need to use peer reviews from other teams to understand what they did wrong in this notebook. This could lead to the issue of notebooks being leaked or copied without consent from the origanal team.
Some solutions would be to keep judges anonymous so that parrents, coaches, and students don’t lash out at judges (which should be a G1 solutions) also an entire team should ask for permission from a coach in order to see their scores incase a team is too enotionally sensitive.
What I would like to conclude is for vex to release scores and feedback for notebook.
Anonymous judging could only really work for notebook rubrics that aren’t handwritten or signed by the judge (and even then, students might speculate about who it is based on who judged interviews or judged at other events), and it wouldn’t work for interview rubrics, since the team can see all of the judges who interviewed them.
Many judges have also volunteered in other roles over the years, or may be a teacher or parent from a school one of the teams goes to, so some students might recognize them at the event or find out who they are from someone else, even if the judge never reveals their name.
There have been a lot of discussions and debates about showing teams their rubric scores in the past (there were seasons 10+ years ago where it was still allowed, and there was a pilot program that tried it a few years ago), and although there are still disagreements between forum members about it, the conclusion that the people making the rules side with is that the drawbacks to giving students their rubric scores outweigh the positives.
One point I’ve heard before is that different judges sometimes have differences in how they interpret the rubric or in what things they notice, and while judges do attempt to make their scores as consistent and accurate as they’re able to within the time they have available, the ultimate goal is to give the right awards to the right teams (largely through the discussions about potential award winners at the end of the event), even if their original rubric scores were not as accurate as they could be. (The rubric score has its greatest importance for the teams who are candidates for the Excellence and Design Awards, while other awards are based largely on factors that would not necessarily be shown in the rubric score.)
Staying with just the notebooks. Here are things that will led to inconsistent scores between events and judges. Time being controlled for review of the notebooks. Since the notebooks vary in length, some judges will devote more time to longer ones. Judges are only supposed to review for a fixed period of time. Next, background of the judges will impact the scores. STEM versus nonSTEM will impact what is keyed in on. In order to more normalize the scoring, the JA should work with the judges to score 1 notebook so the scores will be more levelled. The key is for us to work on standardizing. The next and a major annoyance for me is remote judging of notebooks. If the JA does not control the time a notebook is reviewed for remote judging, the notebooks that score well in the time controlled venues might score worse because of the control issue. Since AI usage is rampant, the times alloted are not consistant (perhaps not controlled), and STEM versus nonSTEM judges, telling you scores would not be beneficial. I wish we could say why you scored top middle or bottom, Since it would vary with events, it likely would not help. I am pushing the JA’s to talk to each other and all, but even with our own chat. Few are willing to discuss. It is sad since it is supposed to be about the kids. IMO
Your mistake is that judges at events are a good place to get feedback.
The problem at an event is that it doesn’t matter how good your notebook is, it depends how it compares to the other teams at the event. The same team with the same notebook and the same interview will not win the same awards at a different event. That’s why the feedback just doesn’t translate.
Have a coach, parent, or anyone involved in the community judge your notebook against the rubric and give you their feedback. That’s probably the best way to get real feedback that you can use.