FIRST Robotics Competition Blog

This summer, we have been again hard at work making improvements to the Judging Process and we are excited to share these updates:

Chairman’s Award Changes

In an effort to help both teams and judges, we are pleased to share that teams will no longer have to print the Chairman’s Video Consent form, sign it, and bring it to each event. This form is now part of the Chairman’s submission. Teams will not be able to submit their application without clicking the checkbox that agrees to the Chairman’s Video Consent & Release of Rights Form. A screenshot of how this will appear in the portal is below:

Over the past few years, one thing we have repeatedly heard from both teams and judges is how to verify the data in each team’s Chairman’s submission. This summer, we partnered with the Hall of Fame Teams get one step closer to solving this issue. We have updated the Chairman’s Award Definitions and introduced a new word – “Reached”. You will also notice that we introduced a Documentation Form. Teams are expected to select the appropriate word when submitting their application. To help ensure they are doing that, teams are asked to provide the Chairman’s Documentation Form to the Judges to verify the words and numbers they are using. Note this is not a required form (i.e. you can still be eligible without this form) but providing it shows the Judges that your activities are well planned and documented. We recognize many teams have been providing this sort of documentation to the judges already, but by formalizing the process with a form and tighter definitions we hope to make this process more consistent and clearer for all teams and judges.

Dean’s List Award Changes

Another improvement we have made is to the Dean’s List nomination process. Instead of asking for each student’s GPA, we instead are asking the mentor to describe the student’s academic performance with an indicator the school uses with 200 maximum characters. We recognize that many schools provide feedback about performance in different ways and limiting it to GPA does not allow for those differences. Here are 2 examples of how a mentor may fill in this question:

Example 1 - Josh excels not only in robotics but also in his classes. His cumulative GPA is 3.9 out of a 4.0 scale.
Example 2 - Josh excels in academics. He has attained 90% on a 100% scale

Submitted Award Interview Changes

If you typically submit for either the Chairman’s or Dean’s List award, you know that those awards require an interview and each event had a sign-up for teams to choose their preferred interview slot. This introduced a level of unfairness that we are attempting to improve. Teams no longer have to spend unnecessary time waiting to sign up or worry when they are slightly late arriving to the venue. Instead, teams that have successfully submitted online will be randomly assigned to a time slot for an interview. Once the interview schedule has been posted, Pit Admin will make an announcement and teams can see the slot to which they are assigned. Some teams may need to request to change time slots. In order to do so, the team must find another team who is willing to switch. Both teams will then go to Pit Admin and request the time change. Pit Admin is the only group who can approve the change. Pit Admin will alert the Judge Advisor or Judge Advisor Assistant.

Entrepreneurship Award

You may remember last year that we announced the new process for the Entrepreneurship Award that no longer required an online submission. After receiving feedback from this past season, we have made some slight adjustments to the guidelines and also created a template to help teams better understand what we are looking for. Please note, that this is a rough guideline and used to steer teams in the right direction, but teams can still (and should) add their own creative touches to ensure the Summary Business plan represents their team.

Safety Award

This summer, we have begun working closer with UL (Underwriters Laboratories) and wanted the award description to align more closely with the other awards, so be sure to check out the updated guidelines. Moving forward, Judges and UL Safety Advisors will work together on judging this award at events. We will also only be awarding one winner per event. This award does still differ from the other awards in one area: the ‘Spread the Wealth’ philosophy so this award will stand alone.

Judging Process

In an effort to be a little more transparent about the Judging process, we have created a 1-page document that shows how the Judging Process works at a typical event. We train our Judge Advisors to maintain a consistent experience for the teams, but there are external factors (i.e. number of volunteers available, etc) that sometimes may modify this process slightly. We hope all of our teams have a good experience with Judging at the event and if you have any questions contact FIRST HQ.