Talk:Adjudicators' briefing day

''The following are comments made on the original paper draft of the Chief Adjudicator's Handbook. Please feel free to add to them where appropriate.'' martpol 15:32, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Areas to cover in the briefing day
Trevor Sather

"Crucial areas for me are:
 * use of the full range of the marking scheme – we already limit it to a range of 60 – 80, so we should use it – but some judges go through several tournaments never giving marks higher than 76 or lower than 65;
 * application of this principle to the Style, Content & Strategy subsets – many judges are guilty of never awarding debates on Style, when we allocate 40% of our marks to this category;
 * being constructive in adjudication speeches and feedback, and never making debaters feel they lost a debate for their team; and
 * getting all judges to understand that the decision of the CA and CAP in judge allocation is final – there is no perfect system, and egos will be bruised, but the quality of judging panels is paramount."

Using the marks for the video debate
Trevor

"In 2003 the marks of everyone in the room were tabulated and published in the hotel lobby (without names), in an exercise to demonstrate the “real marks” (i.e. the average) for the video debate. (Ultimately the only way to determine the exact mark for a speech is to take the average of the marks awarded by every experienced judge at the tournament – indeed it has been suggested that the Grand Final should be marked this way…).  It also showed the spread and disparity of marks, and encouragingly most adjudicators were in the same couple-of-mark spread.  Those who weren’t, of course, might have been depressed by the exercise."

Claire Ryan

"Those adjudicators whose marks on the test ballot in 2007 were the most divergent were indeed those with whom we had the most trouble and about whom we received the most complaints on feedback forms in 2007. The shortage of adjudicators meant that we did not have the luxury of dispensing with their services as we might have had in other Championships."