Online Judging
Online Judging can refer to both the ability for Judges to judge with electronic rubrics, that they can access anywhere they have an internet connection, as well as the feature group that surrounds this capability. However, one distinction to make is that Online Judging is different from Virtual Judging / a Virtual or Remote event in that the Virtual piece is only one sub feature of Online Judging and most of the Online Judging features are available independent of the virtual aspect. zFairs uses Online Judging to support in person and remote events equally.
Judge Registration
Easily find out what the availability, contact information, category preferences, etc. are for your judges. If you are using Online Judging, your judges will need to register as a judge and use their username and password to login to judge projects on their tablet, I-Pad or mobile device on the day of the fair.
How do we ensure that each student is judged the same?
Every judge is different, a perfect project for one judge may be an okay project for another; some judges tend to assign a high amount of points while others tend to assign just a few. To combat these inconsistencies we normalize how judges score and a project scores. This ensures that one judge does not have more pull then any other; it also addresses the issue of judges that score high vs low.
To do this we find the standard deviation between a judge's average score, we assign a z-score for each judge, and then we are able to adjust scores accordingly. Effectively, we are able to normalize how a judge scores. For example, if you where judged by Judge A and his average score was low so he was assigned a z-score of 1.3 then the score he gave me would be adjusted by {1.3 * (standard deviation) + (my score)}.
If you would like to use the Auto Assign Judges Projects to Judge Feature, please see the Judge auto assign page. There you will find more information regarding this feature and instructions on how to use it.
Online Judging Organization
When organizing your online judging one important question is how you are going to organize your contest. Meaning are you wanting to make judge assignments before hand, right before the contest after judges have signed in, or not make assignments at all.
Questions to answer
- Style: (Assignment or Free form)
- Min times each entry needs to be judged
- Using adjusted judge score or average adjusted score
- Are you going to have a finals round (using online judging or not)
Assignments
You can make judging assignments once your judges have registered, depending on how you make assignments this can be super fast if or very time consuming. If you use our auto assignment feature it will take just a few seconds.
Pros: Judges have assignments, more control Cons: Time consuming, No show judges, extra unplanned for judges
Before Hand
You can make your judging assignments days before your event, once your judges and participants have registered. You can always make tweaks. The con with this option is a judge may not show and you will have to move this assignments to another judge.
After Sign In
On the day of your event once judges have signed in for the day you can make assignments, this allows you to avoid the pit fall of a judge not showing up, however you lose a bit of control because you are going to need to do the auto judge assign.
Free Form
Don't make assignments just relax and let your judges and judge captains handle the worry. (This may be hard for some.) You can direct judges to simply select the category or grade division they want to judge and then ensure that all the projects are judged the minimum number of times. The system will push projects that have not been judged to the top of the list so no one is missed and making it easy to know which projects still need to be judged. You have little control, judges and judge captains feel empowered.
