Alumni Volunteers

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sean9keenan
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Re: Ohio 2011

Post by sean9keenan »

chalker7 wrote:
dholdgreve wrote: Interesting choice of words, considering they are volunteers...

I would think that this information could be captured in a database, then sorted by state, by interest, but in reality do we really believe that department heads at state tournaments will be willing to relinquish the authority of these events to SO alums potentially having no ties to the campus, as opposed to tapping Grad Students on their shoulder and having someone that is 100% indentured to the department?
Wow....buy into conspiracy theories much? Don't forget that the evil multinational corporation controlling the national office also had a man on the grassy knoll. Coincidence? I think not!

I am obviously kidding with that, but seriously it would be great to have a database for volunteers. What my brother was trying to point out above is that it is very difficult to manage such a system. Science Olympiad already has an alumni database (http://soinc.org/alumni_survey), even if it isn't explicitly for the purposes of volunteering. If we were to have one large, central database, someone would have to sort through all of the submissions and put those who filled out the forms in contact with those who need help. That's great in theory, but incredibly difficult to actually implement.

Also, just because alumni have participated for years does not necessarily mean they know exactly what to do. One common problem we have with new alumni event supervisors is that they simply write tests that are vastly too difficult or complicated. The reason for this is obvious, the alumni who volunteer were usually some of the best competitors. They expect many of the teams to be at a similar level and write a test accordingly. It normally takes a couple of iterations before they get the hang of things. Which is not to say having alumni help out is a bad thing, I think our established alumni base is a great, largely untapped resource. We just have to be smart about how to involve more alumni.
As an alumni that began helping out this year I know that I did have somewhat of a learning curve when it came to writing the tests, but I know that I would have been much more receptive to suggestions and advice then many other people that aren't as dedicated. Whether that be example tests or anything. I know that the advice that I would have given my past self is to make the tests easier to grade, since you don't have that much time to grade them, and to make the difficulty extremely scaling, such that everyone can get some points, but not all, after all the point of the tests is to accurately differentiate the teams, and I think my second round of tests (states) did an even better job of accomplishing those two goals then my regionals tests.
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Re: Ohio 2011

Post by chalker »

quizbowl wrote:Does one necessarily have to be a graduate to compete? Could a C competitor help out in any tournament that needs help? I guess it wouldn't be feasible if someone did in their own area, but in another? A lot of C people would love to help out (including me :) )

Sure. We don't care what your age is if you are willing to volunteer to help.

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Re: Ohio 2011

Post by chalker »

Littleboy wrote:Yea some of us wouldn't mind going to nats to help out
Note that ever year there is a general call for volunteers to help at nationals. This year you can find the details at: http://nso.wisc.edu/volunteering.php

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Re: Ohio 2011

Post by sean9keenan »

chalker wrote:
sean9keenan wrote:I just created a form that sort of represents what I was thinking of:

http://goo.gl/WeipQ

Does anyone have any thoughts regarding this? It seems like it could only do good. There aren't many disadvantages to it

This is a very good idea. Is there a way to customize it to a particular state so we aren't swamped with people from all over the country?
Regarding this point it's extremely easy to filter out just the people from a specific state, a single click, and google also has some software which I think can let you export and map all of the volunteers on a map rather easily. In addition before it were to become a real survey I would recommend adding a few questions and cleaning up the form, that was more of a proof of concept ~2 minute mockup.

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Re: Alumni Volunteers

Post by gneissisnice »

I love helping out at competitions.

I'm lucky because the coach of my jr. high happens to be the state Fossils director, and he usually asks me to help out at competition (Fossils/Rocks and Minerals have always been my best events).

I've competed so many times that I know what the kids are feeling when they do the events and what questions might be considered a bit too vague and whatnot. I was the event supervisor in NYS for Division B this year, and I really enjoyed getting to help out and grade tests and make sure things were running smoothly.
2009 events:
Fossils: 1st @ reg. 3rd @ states (stupid dinosaurs...) 5th @ nats.
Dynamic: 1st @ reg. 19thish @ states, 18th @ nats
Herpetology (NOT the study of herpes): NA
Enviro Chem: 39th @ states =(
Cell Bio: 9th @ reg. 18th @ nats
Remote: 6th @ states 3rd @ Nats
Ecology: 5th @ Nats
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