ANST - A&S - does utility count?

[Darlene Vandever]

Mike Young wrote:

> Perhaps to give everyone a fair forum to present thier work, we should
> think more about separate catagories for A&S competions instead of just
> lumping everything together into one.

Greetings to the List,

     Categories would help, I agree.  The A&S coordinator for an event would
need to get with the Autocrat and publish the categories.  Also, what do you do
when you get a single entry in a category?  Disqualify it?  Move it into another
category?
     Mundanely, I am the coordinator for our school's science fair (besides
teaching, I don't have THAT cushy a job!).  Sometimes, especially in math or
computer science, we receive only a single entry in that category.  We have
standardized judging sheets by which each entry is judged.  There are 10
criteria with a maximum of 10 points per criteria.  The criteria range from
"attractiveness of display" to "quality of background research" to
"understanding of techniques shown by the student" with other qualifiers besides
these per criteria.  Judging is quick, equal across the board, and less fraught
with personal likes and dislikes.  With these forms, a non-scientist could judge
(and has judged) any project submitted in any of the 12 categories we have with
confidence and the entrant can be confident that their project is given a
thorough, fair and non prejudiced evaluation.  There is a space at the bottom of
the sheet for comments, which I, in my capacity as the coordinator, REVIEW
FIRST.  Why?  because sometimes the comments are NOT "constructive criticism"
but instead are of a disrespectful or personal nature. (A comment such as "You
are obviously unable to read a book.  Your background research is disgraceful!
Why you ever entered is beyond my understanding." would never reach the
entrant's possession.  Such "flaying" under the pretense of trying to get this
person to understand that they need to do more background research is not
appropriate.  Yet I have seen and heard such comments and others just as
inappropriate leveled at some of our contestants entered into our A&S
competitions.)
We tally up the scores and those in each category which fall within 5 points of
each other in the highest scores, we get fresh sheets and look at them again.
When we have determined a clear winner in each category, we get fresh sheets and
look at the best in all categories, if we need to determine an overall winner.
At the regional fair, we call these the "grand award winners", at the building
level we don't choose an overall winner.  However, we do then look at those
entries that have no competition against them in their category to determine if
they are of a high enough caliber to send to the regional fair.  They don't
automatically win due to lack of competition.

    The long and the short of the above message is that categories are fine, but
we also need some type of standardized judging form, used kingdom wide, placed
in the possession of the A&S ministers of each group (or seneschal if the canton
has a KM instead of an A&S), made PUBLIC to the future entrants so they know by
what criteria they are judged, and commentary screened first by the coordinator
of the competition to eliminate comments which are of a personally denigrating
nature.

    It would be up to the Laurels to do this, I suppose, since A&S is their
bailiwick.  I have heard noises in the past that this sort of thing was going to
be done.  But I take it from the comments in this thread that it either hasn't
been done or is not done on a kingdom wide basis.  I'm sure I will be corrected
if I am wrong.  :)

    Just for the record, if the above description piques anyone's interest,
Laurel or not, and you would like to see one of those judging sheets we use in
our building, regional, state and *international* competitions, (we scientists
have standardized it at all levels.  ;> ), please drop me private email and
unless I am absolutely swamped with requests, I will be glad to send you one to
look at.  I think that after 42 years of competition, the International Science
Fair committee and their subordinates have worked out a good judging sheet which
we might be able to modify for our own use.  It is NOT COPYWRITED and so it
wouldn't be a problem that way.

   Just my 1 pound, 12 farthings worth.

In Service,

HL Annes Clotilde von Bamburg,
Seneschal, Canton of Gate's Edge


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