Why can't we see a graded rubric?

[technik3k]

@CJR_Robotics

This is by far the most frustrating part of the competition for lots of rookie public school kids in my under resourced district- they notebook, turn it in at a competition, don’t win anything, and then are just told to keep doing it. Compare that to robots—students build them, test them, see other ideas at competitions, and then iterate. The notebook process has none of that feedback cycle. Even just suggesting that competitions add more of the available awards (even if they’re not qualifying to states/worlds) to give that encouragement to kids has fallen on deaf ears.

I wish there was a way to give your comment +100

Perhaps, @DanMantz or members of @VEX_GDC have such magik powers.

@CJR_Robotics

So, what do we try to do on the positive side? We’re experimenting with some approaches within the current rules. One thing we’ve tried is to run a league and give out pseudo-awards at earlier sessions- recognizing something like “best Test page” or “best design cycle” or “best technical drawing,” asking students if we can share with the group, and giving some kind of treat as an award. I can tell you this is far more motivating to 90% of teams than anything officially in place.

I wish more people did something like that, trying to help beginners to get various types of feedback from different angles.

It is unrealistic to expect that students (and coaches) who had no previous experience will learn much from the minimal feedback in a form of several numbers, in addition to alien sounding rubric.

If you think about it, announcing two team numbers who won Excellence and Design awards (out of, let say, 32 teams at the competition) is, literally, just 10 bits of information and Notebook weight there is just a small fraction.

@CJR_Robotics

But I’d love to hear other ideas people have!

Most of the times, if I see that there are teams whose members are eager to learn how to become better builders or notebookers, I would try to spend more time with them during pit interviews, asking questions in a way that suggest how they could improve their skill.

Also, I would bring with me previous season’s notebook from my team to show novice teams sections that could serve as examples for how they could improve both their notebooking and robot design skil.

Finally, for those students who want to excel, it will take for us very little effort and gives great benefit for them to make sure new teams know that they could look up notebooks of the past winners who made them available online.

You can start here or simply create poster or handout with a QR code for a Google search for vex winning notebook.

That will return both Worlds winning notebook examples as well as ton of instructional videos with tips and tricks how to start and maintain top notch notebooking process.