Recently my team has begun putting in significantly more effort into our engineering notebook. However we have received very few judged awards. We are on extremely good terms with another team who wins design at every tournament. They shared their notebook with us and it was 450 pages however there was significantly less information on each page. We have our state tournament in two weeks and were hoping to qualify based on excellence or design and have a decent chance at teamwork champion which are all the world qualifiers. That is why I have come to the Forums to tell us where we can improve our notebook and should we spread information out more?
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I would recommend taking pictures of EVERY major/ semi-major change. You also have no section on drive code/ (1) auton something else I think would win you some points. We do a weekly goals page followed by a daily entry w/ picture or diagram and recap the week with a summary slide. We do match analysis of every tournament match as soon as they end and talk about what we did well and what we could improve on. Those also end in tournament summaries. Also, there are some very big spelling errors in some places like " Having such a high speed ratio makes for less twerk" (I don’t blame you I just that one was funny lol) We have someone proofread every page before finalizing it. On top of this, I would love to see more color across the pages and maybe some color-coding. I overall just feel a lack of personality and feel it’s too “robotic” (ironic I know). I think you guys are in a good spot to start in but have somethings that could really help push you further!
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Have you put significant effort into your interviewing skills and preparation?
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Remember, quality over quantity. When making your entries, try not to go on rabbit trails within the entry, just focus on the main design. I will often spend too much time explaining something trivial and I end up with an entry that is 950 words long. (we are typing the entries up on Word, then writing it into a physical notebook.) I don’t have acess to any google websites, so I can’t view you notbook. I hope what I said helps. Good luck!
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Make sure you review the notebook rubric here. Also, try incorporating a few more pictures. I see 1-2 pictures per page. Aim for 3-4 (or more). Also, you need to put the step of the Engineering Design Process on each page that it applies to. This helps judges track the process. Hope this helps!
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Ok thanks I will try to include more pictures it is generally challenging for us because we are at a program that does not allow phones however we can focus more on it as for adding color do you think we should swap to a different notebook template?
I am aware of the innovate award however in our region only design excellence and teamwork champion are world qualifying and you can only win one judged award, so in regionals we plan to leave the sheet out but we had it previously
I think the template is fine, although we do use the default Vex one which may be nice for you guys (we’re in the process of making a custom one for next year). I really think that a lot more focus on ALL parts of drive code would help (like screenshots and explanations) if you use blocks to code I recommend adding comments to all parts and using My Blocks named appropriately for each function. This way when you put them in the notebook you can use simple arrows pointing each thing out to maybe a diagram of a controller with triggers (this is what we do). Also as someone else pointed out you should have an Innovate Statement. I understand it doesn’t qualify so maybe just turn it into a “creative solution” page temporarily so you don’t accidentally win it and miss excellence (I think this is your thought?). Good luck with your notebook!
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Ok I will try to include more photos and some more on the drive code this all makes a lot of sense thank ya’ll.
It looks pretty good! Couple things that you need to add though:
You hit on the Engineering Design Process (EDP) at the beginning, but try your best to hit on it a ton throughout the notebook. It is by far the biggest thing judges want to see.
Separate your text a little bit better, just a block of text isn’t very appealing. Try using Bold Text when you are moving into a new section of the same entry. Or at very least start a new paragraph.
As others have said, try your best to add as many images as you can (within reason) my building chapters, for example, have 10-20 images.
I’d recommend using the given Google Slides format found here I used a new format this year, I figured it out now, but I was wasting so much time with my new format; it would’ve been better to spend that time noteboooking
Import your code. Take screenshots of your code and add into the notebook. Make sure that you either comment within the code (if you are using a typed code such as python) or just explain the code in the notebook (if you are using blocks). You don’t need to explain every line. Just explain what you are trying to do with the code, along with any errors or fixes you made
Overall great job though. Good luck! Let me know if you have any questions!
For us, we created our own template. Adding illustrations and color just helps to break up the monotony of black text w/white bg. We use Google Docs for our notebook. Also I forgot to mention to condense what you can into bullet points and such. Here’s a few pics of our notebook (it’s not very good, but might help you) (sorry for the bad images I’m on an iPad rn)
Here are just some ideas from what we do. 1 is a picture of a more recent research page, while the other 2 are our tournament template. Good luck.
Assuming your team was the one most highly considered for both the Innovate and Design award (through the ranking process during awards deliberation, after all of the notebooks are reviewed and interviews conducted), the award you’ll recieve will be the Design award as detemrined based on the awards precedence. Having the innovate award submission form doesn’t make you less eligible or in contention for other awards but gives your team an opportunity to attempt another award.
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@dragonshark, I’ve linked my engineering notebook from the start of the season to the bigginning of October (We haven’t scanned it since) I’ll share it onve we scan it for state, but I hope that may help.
Engineering Notebook-.pdf (14.4 MB)
(Please tell me if the link doesn’t work)
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Thanks that was actually really helpful I see how adding the photos makes the build process so much easier. It also seems like the text is more broken up ty.
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I agree, I would also add pictures about changes, because it just helps give the judges a perspective of how your robot has been growing. Adding pictures, was also something that, I think, the judges recommended doing.
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Nice notebook! I like that you’ve created a notebook by hand. My teams prefer that to the digital format. You should be proud of what you have put into your notebook!
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Very strong notebook, though, you might want to consider adding more pages. In my experience, vex values quantity as much as quality, meaning that you need more entries. In addition, you should also try to take some photos to show the engineering design process. I don’t recommend just doing what you did in a range, notebook what you did by day. If your aiming for design/innovate, you would want about 70 pages of your quality notebook. Great job, a bit more page and analysis’s you have a high quality notebook!
A criteria of excellence is to be a strong contender in numerous award categories, so innovate form might help that.
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Whose notebook are you talking about? If it is mine, we have fixed those issues and now have 200+ pages…
Your notebook is amazing, just add a little more detail.
See you at State!