Hi Everyone!
For this VRC season, our team is using the digital format of the engineering notebook. An idea of attaching videos to the notebook of things like Skills Runs, slo-mos of mechanisms to see why they aren’t functioning properly, etc. , came to mind, and I was wondering if any of you would recommend attaching videos to the notebook. I have heard that judges don’t have much time when reading through engineering notebooks, so maybe they won’t view the videos, but I think that this could help my team keep everything organized in one place with explanations of what is going on and keep track of what we did and what to try to avoid in the future. This is different from citing other teams’ works, it’s about keeping track of our team’s progress, so the videos are coming from us.
Thanks in advance for any feedback!
Videos and external links are typically not reviewed by judging team - no time, no way to assure every judge will watch them or look at them.
That said, keep it simple - if you link external material as the way you evaluate designs - you are documenting the process. Similar to any citations, if your design was influenced by something, cite it and explain why it is impactful - or was considered and you chose another route.
You should NOT be creating a notebook that is there to please the judges, but rather document your journey and adherence to the design process that is useful to your team. First priority is make the notebook useful for your team - not all members will have seen the material you have, nor will they follow the thought process for picking a direction or dismissing it. A great example of documentation would be to cite the discussion with regard to code templates and student-centered and document your team’s approach to this issue. It is authentic documentation of critical thinking about how your team approaches issues that all engineering teams face.
For specific of test videos - create a test plan and a table to record results, then document direction team will take from information - include link to test video so all your team members can view and give feedback. Do not expect Judges to watch it … hope your teammates do! and provide their feedback of things that might have been missed.
iterate.
If I remember correctly judges are not allowed to review information or links outside the notebook, so if you want you can include links as citations but it wouldn’t help your rubric score.
Thanks for your response!
You’re absolutely correct about this, thanks for bringing this to my attention.
This is a great idea! I will take this into consideration.
Thanks again!
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