Turning Point Excellence Award Requirements

[Adam_T]

I want to get a better handle on Excellence Award Requirements. The “top 5 or top 20%” type references seem really specific, like they are hard rules. At the end of “Deliberations” it says “the minimum Excellence requirement of submitting an Engineering Notebook”, that makes it sound like the “top 5…” are guidelines. I also understand that if there are no good Excellence Award candidates then the award should not be given.

I am wondering if the top 5 or top 20% for Design Award, 5 or top 20% for skills, and top 10 in qualifying are hard and fast rules, or if they are guidelines to what an Excellence Award winning team should look like.

In an example, say a certain team is #1 in qualifying, they dominated the entire day. The team has the best notebook by far. Their skills score is 6th place (or 25th percentile) or maybe even 7th. Should that team be considered for the Excellence Award or not?

Determining the Excellence Award at Events
Judges should start by selecting the top 5 or top 20%, whichever is larger, of the Design Award candidates using the Design Award process and rubrics outlined in this guide. These top 5 teams should be considered the top candidates for the Excellence Award at the event.
To determine the final Excellence winner at an event, Judges should consider the following for each of these candidates:
• Quality of their Engineering Notebook and design process.
• Their on field performance (i.e., are they in the top 10 ranked teams in the qualifying matches? and are they in the top 5 or top 20%, whichever is larger, of the teams in skills scores?). Judges should use the ranking reports from Tournament Manager or the VEX Via app.
• The team’s dynamics: is the team student-centered and do they exhibit good sportsmanship? Where they considered for other Judged awards?

Deliberations
The final decision on the Excellence Award winner should be qualitative based on what Judges have seen during their interactions with each of the teams and their observations at the event. Judges will use their best judgment to choose the team they feel best exemplifies the best overall robotics program. Judges should ask themselves if this team has met the criteria to be considered an excellent team and does the team exemplify overall excellence. Would Judges want the team to be emulated by other teams?
The Judges’ final decision on the Excellence Award should include a team’s behavior, sportsmanship, and professionalism at the event. A team is composed of students, mentors, and adults at the competition. Judges may wish to use the “Field Note to Judges” form to help collect information on team sportsmanship. Teams must submit an Engineering Notebook to be eligible for the Excellence Award.
There may occasionally be cases where Judges should not award the Excellence Award to any team at the event. This may happen when either no teams submit an Engineering Notebook or when the only notebooks submitted are of a very poor quality.
In the case where no notebooks are submitted, there is clearly no team that meets the minimum Excellence requirement of submitting an Engineering Notebook and Judges should not award Excellence at the event.

[Tarek_Shraibati]

Thank you for your question.

The official Game Q&A often stresses is not possible to speculate on every possible situation referees may encounter at an event. Similarly, it is not possible speculate on every situation judges may encounter in this forum.

The two portions of the judges guide quoted are dealing with two aspects of the Excellence Award judging process. The first quote refers to the process that judges are to use to determine the Excellence Award at events and the criteria they are to consider.

The second quote refers to the portion of the guide which instructs judges that they are always expected to apply qualitative judgement during deliberations. The last sentence in the second quote above is intended to address those special, and we hope rare, cases where very few or no teams submit notebooks. The judges guide clearly states that teams must submit notebooks and the process outlined for determining Excellence requires notebook evaluation. The last sentence is simply reinforcing the point that there may be certain situations where no Excellence award is given at an event.