The 2026-2026 Robotics Guide to Judging has been released.
This update has made a number of formatting and substantive changes, including:
- 2.11 - Added “Judging Feedback and Confidentiality” section explaining more about judging feedback policies, and highlighting strategies teams can use to practice and improve notebooking and interview skills
- 5.5 - Increased guidance for judge collaboration in engineering notebook evaluations
- Appendix A - New judging format for RECF Inspire to align with other collegiate activities
- Judging Resources - Excellence award performance criteria changed from 40% to 50%
- Judging Resources - Added “3D Printing & Fabrication Award” and “Team Spirit Award” to the optional volunteer-nominated award category
- Judging Resources - “Team Interview Rubric” has been changed to “Design & Innovate Award Rubric” with new usage guidance
- Engineering Notebook Rubric and Design & Innovate Award Rubric reformatted for clarity and ease of use
- Coach/Student rubric guides created as learning tools for teams
- Overall guide edited and reformatted for clarity and usability
Please visit here to view the update Guide to Judging and associated rubrics and documents.
Further explanation of more prominant changes:
- The Guide to Judging was cut down several thousand words from the previous edition while preserving intent and meaning. The end result is a Guide that is easier to read, understand, and use. Almost every document has been reworked for clarity and ease of use - including the Engineering Notebook and Team Interview Rubric (which is now called the “Excellence, Design, and Innovate Award Rubric”).
- Big changes include an entirely new format for RECF Inspire, which cuts down paperwork needed by judges by eliminating rubrics, eliminates the burden of creating and judging Engineering Notebooks, and put college level judging more in alignment with the formal presentation and writing skills used by other college assignments.
- Another new kind of document are Student/Coaches Rubric Guides, which turn the rubrics into questions that coaches/teachers can ask students, or students can ask themselves to help with self-evaluations. Here are links to those guides: Engineering Notebook, Design/Innovate.
- 2 new optional, non-qualifying awards were added: The 3D Printing and Fabrication Award, and the Team Spirit Award. The first, as one might suppose, is focused on recognizing teams specifically for doing cool things with the new 3D printing and custom fabrication allowances. The second focuses on recognizes teams that put effort into creating their team identity, which includes branding, robot and pit decorations, mascots, and other aspects of a team that are not necessarily robot related. Alongside Sportsmanship and Energy, these awards can be awarded to a team in addition to a Judged Award.
- Lastly, the Team Interview Rubric is no longer required for initial interviews - because different judges score rubrics differently, those scores were not calibrated from one judging team to another, making those scores not very useful outside of the judging team - instead the emphasis for initial interviews is placed on qualitative notes. The Excellence/Design/Innovate rubric is instead reserved for follow-up interviews for those specific awards, done by the same set of judges, and thus those scores are able to be compared with one another. This also cuts down paperwork required by judges for initial interviews so that those initial interviews can be completed more quickly. This gives judges more time to spend on watching matches, doing follow-up interviews, looking at Engineering Notebooks, and other judging activities.
As always, we value feedback from our community. If you have any suggested changes, notice a typo or mistake, or have an idea of how to improve our processes and documentation, please email judging@recf.org.
Thanks!