I’m actually curious. I know there are multiple factors to winning any judged award, but an EN is very important. There is a rubric and all, but what do you think is the most important thing to put in there/ what do you think separates a good notebook from an excellent one in the judging process?
I’l start. I’ve heard that judges don’t read every single piece of text in your EN. So, honestly, I think that media is important. And, it should be of variety. Sketches, photos, CAD Models, etc., are what I think a lot of judges would look at.
By the way, this post is just out of curiosity and the want to improve of being lead notebooker. After all, there may be a few important things that I haven’t thought of before that might majorly impact how judges view us.
Oh, and by the way, this post isn’t meant to suggest that certain parts or elements are better than others and you only need the “better” ones, this is just me asking other notebookers and former judges what differentiates a good notebook from an excellent one (in other words what element kinda breaks the tie for an award).
Flip it. Is your notebook/documentation to every member of your team and your development process? if not, then it is likely your notebook is not going to be great as it serves no purpose for your team. Every member of a team should be invested in documenting the journey and use it as a definitive reference for everything the team does.
This advice comes back from Dr Judith Donath who was asked what makes a web resourceful useful, her response made a lot of sense - if a web site is not useful to the team that developed it, it would not be of utility to anyone else.
Definitely should make the notebook in a way that’s useful to you like @lacsap said.
Anything that is relevant and highly detailed should be included. You should always include the designs your team made and document them in a detailed, reasonable manner.
You can also include build instructions for the robot(s) and/or components thereof. It’s a big task but also pretty impressive and tends to be one of the things that separates the excellent notebooks from the good ones.
And just about anything else that documents the design process in detail should be a pretty high priority, IMO.
The thing that’s most important to a notebook is the content and format.
Remember to use cad to showcase designs, sketching could work too if you want.
Keep in mind too that the notebooks you craft now are training for documentation out in the real world. The point is to provide all the information needed for someone who’s never even met you to understand why you did what you did, and to reproduce the processes, objects and outcomes themselves without having to re-invent anything.
Can I see the design process? Can I see you looking at the game, coming up with ideas, and then trying those ideas out? Did you document what didn’t work? Am I seeing you succeed and fail? (Which means very different things to new vs. experienced teams.)
Are you being really honest about the process you went through to put this project together? Don’t try to censor or edit things. Don’t be dramatic for the sake of drama either. But if you are really straight with me as your judge, I really believe and enjoy the story laid out on the pages. I can see students going through the process that we all actually go through to make these bots. You can make it super easy to give you a 4-5 in every category.
And don't neglect your interview....
Teams will put 20x the effort into their notebook vs interview, but the interview is a good chunk of the points in the rubric. My favorite story to tell my students is “the time I got played by a bunch of girls from Hawaii.” (You have to get the kid’s attention, after all.)
We were going for a second interview and just asked them, what are you most proud of on your robot? If you can imagine it, the team when right through the rubric… I’m most proud of the build… yadda yadda… I’m most proud of the programming… yadda yadda… By the end I looked at my paper and had written a 5 on every line.
I’m not telling you to memorize answers; they clearly hadn’t done that. I am telling you that it’s a good idea to look at the different areas of the rubric and make sure that every area of the rubric has someone who can field those questions well.