science-ation/help/judging.html
2025-02-12 02:22:50 +00:00

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<head>Judging</head>
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<h2>Judging</h2>
<h3>The Judging Process</h3>
<p>SFIAB makes several assumptions about the judging process. These may not
match perfectly with every fair, but often, at least part of the judging system
can be used to accommodate the needs of the fair. You are free to use, or not
use, any of the judging features.
<h4>Categories and Divisions and Challenges</h4>
<p>Judging assumes projects are divided into age <i>Categories</i>. These are
often Junior (grades 7,8), Intermediate (grades 9,10), and Senior (grades
11,12). The categories can be configured through the configuration pages.
<p>SFIAB assumes that ALL projects in an age category are judged together, and
there is a single set of medals for each age category. Historically,
categories were further sub-divided into divisions, and each division was
judged separately. SFIAB no longer supports this model for several reasons:
<ul> <li>It is arguably fairer to the students. It means all the projects in a
strong division can be acknowledged, and that the only Junior Mathematics and
Physics project on the floor isn't guaranteed to get a Gold if it is a weak
project.
<li>It eliminates students who try to do a project for a specific division just
to win a medal. Every fair has/had weaker and stronger divisions, Health
Science typically is a very strong division.
<li>Many projects in different divisions can be judged by judges with the same expertise, so we can group these projects together for judging
<li>Fewer judges are required
<li>Streamlines the awards and award ceremony
</ul>
<p>When a student registers now, they must select a <i>Detailed Division</i>.
There are about 100 detailed divisions, we use the ISEF divisions for this, see <a
href=https://student.societyforscience.org/intel-isef-categories-and-subcategories">ISEF
Divisions</a>. The detailed division is used only for matching judges with projects.
<p>When a judge registers, they must select their top three areas of expertise
from the same detailed division list as the students. Again, this is used only
to match judges with projects.
<p>SFIAB also asks the students to select a <i>Challenge</i> for their project. Challenges
mean nothing. They are not used in any way except to group students into floor
locations. They have no impact on judging or judging teams.
<h4>The Judging Process</h4>
<p>SFIAB assumes there are two rounds of judging. In the first round,
divisional judging teams score projects based on three metrics: scientific though, creativity
and originality, and communication. These metrics are used to compute a score
for each project and rank them first to last. In the second round, a number of
<i>cusp</i> judging teams refine and re-order the projects around the barrier (cusp) between gold/silver,
silver/bronze, bronze/honourable mention, honourable mention/nothing.
<p>The theory is that a clearly strong gold project does not need to be judged
again. Similarly, a project that is ranked in the middle of the bronze
projects also does not need to be judged again. Only the projects near each
cusp need to judged again to ensure the ordering is correct.
<p>SFIAB assumes that each round 1 judging team consist of a number of judges,
usually 3, and that they collaborate and agree on a single score for each
project they judge. The timeslot scheduler assumes each judge visits the
projects independently, of course, for your fair, you are free to not use the
timeslots if you prefer your judging teams travel together. Each judging team
must visit the same subset of projects however.
<p>SFIAB assumes that round 2 judging teams also consist of a number of judges,
usually 6. The judge scheduler tries to assign round 2 judges from a
distribution of round 1 judges.
<p>Special awards judges are not assigned to specific timeslots, they are given
a schedule of when divisional judges are NOT at the projects they must visit.
<hr/>
<h3>Judge Scheduler</h3>
<a name="judge_scheduler"></a>
<p>The judge scheduler performs the following tasks:
<ul><li><b>Deletes all automatically created judging teams</b> (e.g., from a previous run of this scheduler), manually created judging teams are not touched.
<li>Creates new judging teams for divisional, CUSP, and every special award marked as "schedule judges"
<li>Assigns judges to judging teams
<li>Assigns projects to divisional teams and special awards teams
<li>Runs the timeslot scheduler to create a judging schedule for each judging team and project (printable on the reports page)
</ul>
<hr/>
<h3>Timeslot Scheduler</h3>
<p>The judging timetable is broken into a number of equal-length timeslots. For
example, a three hour judging period may have nine timeslots of 20 minutes
each.
The timeslot scheduler is run automatically after the Judge Scheduler, or it
can be run separately. Some situations where it is useful to re-calculate
timeslots without re-calculating judging teams include:
<ul><li>A project becomes unavailable after assignments are made, e.g., they
forget to inform the fair they must leave early to catch a ferry until a week
before the fair.
<li>A change in the judging length, or the length of the timslots
</ul>
The timeslot scheduler does not change judging teams, or the projects assigned
to judging teams. It only calculates a timetable for each judging team and
project. It performs the following actions:
<ul><li>Deletes ALL existing judge timeslot assignments and project timeslot assignments
<li>Computes a timetable for all projects with three different timeslots for:
<ul><li>divisional judges
<li>special awards judges
<li>free time
</ul>
<li>Assigns all Round 1 judges on round 1 divisional judging teams to a specific timeslot to visit each project. These will match up
with divisional timeslots assigned to each project.
</ul>
<p>NO special awards teams are assigned to timeslots. Instead, the system can
print a report for a special awards judging team that lists ALL the special
award timeslots for each project. (Basically, when each student will be at
their project and won't have divisional judges).
<p>NO round 2 divisional (cusp) teams are assigned to timeslots for three reasons:
<ul><li>we don't know which projects need to be judged,
<li>there are more than 3 judges/cusp team, there aren't enough timeslots for 1:1 timeslot assignments,
<li>There's no guarantee that the divisional timeslots assigned to each project actually allow an even distribution of judges.
</ul>
Instead, after projects are assigned to these teams (there's a button
to do this from the judge score entry), the system will print cusp
judging team timeslot reports for each team that lists when each
project is available for divisional judging.
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