Releasing graded tests at Regionals and States

[bearasauras]

Hmmm, I think that would be interesting data to collect. I know in SoCal, the same person would write the test for the entire duration of their college career for the most part if not longer. And talking to other Regional and State Directors, once they find someone who's willing to do an event, they stay on to do the same event from year to year until they no longer want to.

[Alex-RCHS]

I think what Unome and Windu said has merit for the National tournament. For Regional and State, I don't think it's fair to expect teams (especially new teams) to learn the materials and then to try to track down the event supervisors and/or learn the writing style of the event supervisors.

I doubt it's even useful for the majority of state and regional tournaments. I did find some useful info from looking at the ES list for our state tournament when it was published, but really it wouldn't have mattered whether or not I'd looked. Perhaps in a state like NC with several perennially consistent ESes it might be helpful.

NC has various portals for ESs to actually explain this type of info to competitors. It's very helpful. For example, at the Coach's Clinic in October the Anatomy ESs revealed that they would be testing a few national topics at states. And for Microbe, they explained that the ESs were grad students researching TB, zebrafish embryos, and diatoms (I'm so lucky to have done microbe in NC this year... what a great test). Similar info often goes on the state website (ctrl-F "event updates" on this page), or in emails to coaches. I believe this is the best way to make the tests fair to all, even those who wouldn't otherwise know about the different testing styles of each ES.

[daydreamer0023]

I think what Unome and Windu said has merit for the National tournament. For Regional and State, I don't think it's fair to expect teams (especially new teams) to learn the materials and then to try to track down the event supervisors and/or learn the writing style of the event supervisors.

I doubt it's even useful for the majority of state and regional tournaments. I did find some useful info from looking at the ES list for our state tournament when it was published, but really it wouldn't have mattered whether or not I'd looked. Perhaps in a state like NC with several perennially consistent ESes it might be helpful.

NC has various portals for ESs to actually explain this type of info to competitors. It's very helpful. For example, at the Coach's Clinic in October the Anatomy ESs revealed that they would be testing a few national topics at states. And for Microbe, they explained that the ESs were grad students researching TB, zebrafish embryos, and diatoms (I'm so lucky to have done microbe in NC this year... what a great test). Similar info often goes on the state website (ctrl-F "event updates" on this page), or in emails to coaches. I believe this is the best way to make the tests fair to all, even those who wouldn't otherwise know about the different testing styles of each ES.

If anything, I did notice that the Forensics test writer changed about two years ago, but they don't have any recent tests of theirs on the website...

[knottingpurple]

So this doesn't exactly match up with the topic of this thread, but the discussion of studying for the specific ES at nats reminded me for it. My best event last year was probably Remote Sensing, but I felt like when I took the Nationals Remote Sensing test that I'd never taken a Remote Sensing test all that similar to it. When I remarked on that to windu after he ran Remote Sensing at PUSO this year, he told me to go look at the Wright State Invitational Remote Sensing test from last year, and I expected it would have similar question types or something, but when I looked at it, several of the questions seemed to be the same as what I could remember from the Nationals test. As an invitational, it was definitely released to competitors, and somebody had in fact shared it with my team, but not knowing anything about the ES's or anything (besides that one of them was a former colleague of my parents', and the dad of my childhood babysitter, but that didn't really tell me anything about his test writing style lol) I didn't really have time to take every single Remote Sensing test we had from an invitational, and as it happened, Wright State Invitational was not one of the ones I'd taken.

Okay, having gone through the tests side by side, the invitational station 1 is similar in topic to nats station 9, invitational 3 is literally only a couple words different from nats 6, invitational 5 is the same topic as nats 1, invitational 7 and nats 8 require the same interpretation of different data, and while of course I could've studied all of Remote Sensing better and done better, it also seems like attending the Wright State invitational was basically a shortcut to high placings at Nats. It wasn't just a shortcut in familiarity with the ESs' styles but also in familiarity with exact questions, and idk what other people's opinions on that are but I resented it.

[windu34]

So this doesn't exactly match up with the topic of this thread, but the discussion of studying for the specific ES at nats reminded me for it. My best event last year was probably Remote Sensing, but I felt like when I took the Nationals Remote Sensing test that I'd never taken a Remote Sensing test all that similar to it. When I remarked on that to windu after he ran Remote Sensing at PUSO this year, he told me to go look at the Wright State Invitational Remote Sensing test from last year, and I expected it would have similar question types or something, but when I looked at it, several of the questions seemed to be the same as what I could remember from the Nationals test. As an invitational, it was definitely released to competitors, and somebody had in fact shared it with my team, but not knowing anything about the ES's or anything (besides that one of them was a former colleague of my parents', and the dad of my childhood babysitter, but that didn't really tell me anything about his test writing style lol) I didn't really have time to take every single Remote Sensing test we had from an invitational, and as it happened, Wright State Invitational was not one of the ones I'd taken.

Okay, having gone through the tests side by side, the invitational station 1 is similar in topic to nats station 9, invitational 3 is literally only a couple words different from nats 6, invitational 5 is the same topic as nats 1, invitational 7 and nats 8 require the same interpretation of different data, and while of course I could've studied all of Remote Sensing better and done better, it also seems like attending the Wright State invitational was basically a shortcut to high placings at Nats. It wasn't just a shortcut in familiarity with the ESs' styles but also in familiarity with exact questions, and idk what other people's opinions on that are but I resented it.

I think is an issue that must be voiced to national ES in order to be resolved correctly. I certainly struggle myself with trying to ask different, unique questions when writing tests for the same event, and I think its just something that the ES needs to have in mind when doing so. While formatting may not necessarily change due to personal preference, it is certainly crucial that the ES try their best to change the content and vary the focus on their tests (topic-wise).

[dcrxcode]

So this doesn't exactly match up with the topic of this thread, but the discussion of studying for the specific ES at nats reminded me for it. My best event last year was probably Remote Sensing, but I felt like when I took the Nationals Remote Sensing test that I'd never taken a Remote Sensing test all that similar to it. When I remarked on that to windu after he ran Remote Sensing at PUSO this year, he told me to go look at the Wright State Invitational Remote Sensing test from last year, and I expected it would have similar question types or something, but when I looked at it, several of the questions seemed to be the same as what I could remember from the Nationals test. As an invitational, it was definitely released to competitors, and somebody had in fact shared it with my team, but not knowing anything about the ES's or anything (besides that one of them was a former colleague of my parents', and the dad of my childhood babysitter, but that didn't really tell me anything about his test writing style lol) I didn't really have time to take every single Remote Sensing test we had from an invitational, and as it happened, Wright State Invitational was not one of the ones I'd taken.

Okay, having gone through the tests side by side, the invitational station 1 is similar in topic to nats station 9, invitational 3 is literally only a couple words different from nats 6, invitational 5 is the same topic as nats 1, invitational 7 and nats 8 require the same interpretation of different data, and while of course I could've studied all of Remote Sensing better and done better, it also seems like attending the Wright State invitational was basically a shortcut to high placings at Nats. It wasn't just a shortcut in familiarity with the ESs' styles but also in familiarity with exact questions, and idk what other people's opinions on that are but I resented it.

I think is an issue that must be voiced to national ES in order to be resolved correctly. I certainly struggle myself with trying to ask different, unique questions when writing tests for the same event, and I think its just something that the ES needs to have in mind when doing so. While formatting may not necessarily change due to personal preference, it is certainly crucial that the ES try their best to change the content and vary the focus on their tests (topic-wise).

I don't have the time to take a look at the exact questions, but one possibility for some questions is that they are about basic knowledge that every competitor should know, so that's why they are repeated. Yes, that's not a good justification for repeating questions...but its why it happens, speaking from an ES/test-writer perspective and echoing a lot of what windu is saying.

[rfscoach]

Restarting this because of something new I saw,

At our state tournament, we received tests mailed back to us, presumably after the appeals window ended and scores were considered final. Thoughts?

Well, as an event supervisor there, I did not want my test released. That's my thought.

[nicholasmaurer]

So this doesn't exactly match up with the topic of this thread, but the discussion of studying for the specific ES at nats reminded me for it. My best event last year was probably Remote Sensing, but I felt like when I took the Nationals Remote Sensing test that I'd never taken a Remote Sensing test all that similar to it. When I remarked on that to windu after he ran Remote Sensing at PUSO this year, he told me to go look at the Wright State Invitational Remote Sensing test from last year, and I expected it would have similar question types or something, but when I looked at it, several of the questions seemed to be the same as what I could remember from the Nationals test. As an invitational, it was definitely released to competitors, and somebody had in fact shared it with my team, but not knowing anything about the ES's or anything (besides that one of them was a former colleague of my parents', and the dad of my childhood babysitter, but that didn't really tell me anything about his test writing style lol) I didn't really have time to take every single Remote Sensing test we had from an invitational, and as it happened, Wright State Invitational was not one of the ones I'd taken.

Okay, having gone through the tests side by side, the invitational station 1 is similar in topic to nats station 9, invitational 3 is literally only a couple words different from nats 6, invitational 5 is the same topic as nats 1, invitational 7 and nats 8 require the same interpretation of different data, and while of course I could've studied all of Remote Sensing better and done better, it also seems like attending the Wright State invitational was basically a shortcut to high placings at Nats. It wasn't just a shortcut in familiarity with the ESs' styles but also in familiarity with exact questions, and idk what other people's opinions on that are but I resented it.

I think is an issue that must be voiced to national ES in order to be resolved correctly. I certainly struggle myself with trying to ask different, unique questions when writing tests for the same event, and I think its just something that the ES needs to have in mind when doing so. While formatting may not necessarily change due to personal preference, it is certainly crucial that the ES try their best to change the content and vary the focus on their tests (topic-wise).

When I am an ES, I specifically avoid reviewing previous tests I have written for the event until after the majority of the new test is written. At that point, I may go back and identify a handful of questions on topics I'd overlooked that I think are worth paraphrasing for inclusion. But generally, by not looking at past tests I've written, I can avoid writing questions with the same wording and answer choices, even if the topics are similar (just by the nature of the rules). Once you look at a previous test, it can be very difficult to get your past questions out of your head to avoid repeating them.

[nicholasmaurer]

Restarting this because of something new I saw,

At our state tournament, we received tests mailed back to us, presumably after the appeals window ended and scores were considered final. Thoughts?

Well, as an event supervisor there, I did not want my test released. That's my thought.

I'm curious as to why you object to the release of your tests...?

[windu34]

Restarting this because of something new I saw,

At our state tournament, we received tests mailed back to us, presumably after the appeals window ended and scores were considered final. Thoughts?

Well, as an event supervisor there, I did not want my test released. That's my thought.

I'm curious as to why you object to the release of your tests...?

As am I. All of the supervisors I have spoken to are always in favor of releasing tests to students. This is mostly because they are all alumni and remember a time when they were competitors and wished they could see their tests. Why don't you want your test released?