Best Practices for Online Judging

BEST PRACTICES—ONLINE JUDGING

Prior to the tournament

1.      **Set up a tabroom.com account and familiarize yourself with online ballots.

2.      **Be sure your tabroom.com profile has a current cell phone number for you.

3.      **Be sure you know how to access the tournament online video conferencing if it is Zoom, NSDA Campus, Classroom.cloud or whatever they are using.

4.      **Check the time-zone. If you are not in the same time zone as the tournament host be sure you adjust any times to be consistent with the time zone of the host.

During the tournament

1.      **Change your screen name on the video platform to add a J (the letter J for judge) in front of your name. NSDA CAMPUS DOES THIS FOR YOU.

2.      **Have the contact information for the tournament director handy in case there is an issue.

3.      **Once you get into a round have everyone do a pre-round tech check. Check audio/video, set up email chain if needed.

4.      **Keep your video on but your microphone off during presentations.

5.      **Click “start round” on your ballot when everyone is ready to start debating.

6.      **Submit your ballot as soon as possible after the last speaker finishes. You should minimally do points and decision. Comments can be added any time before the end of the tournament.

7.      **You may do an oral critique ONLY if there is time left before the next round. Leave the teams time for lunch and pre-round prep for the next round.

If you have an off round

1.      **Please double and triple check the schedule to be sure you are not on to judge.

2.     ** Stay online if possible. The tournament may have a virtual “judges lounge” for you to hang out. If it is not possible to stay online, please wait 10 minutes into the start time of the next round to be sure you are not needed. Then you may log off—but be sure log back in with plenty of time for your next round.

Technical difficulties in the round

1.      **Try to treat them as you would if you were in person (if applicable).

2.      **Be fair to all when dealing with tech issues.

3.      **Avoid penalizing students for poor tech do the best you can to work with it.

4.     ** Check to find out what the tournament procedure is if there are tournament wide tech issues.

5.      **Please do not invite students to your personal Zoom account to finish the round—too much liability. If necessary the tournament can direct you to an alternate platform.

6.      Common tech issues

a.      Lagging audio—have the student try turning off the video to improve bandwidth

b.      Noise in the audio—have students mute themselves if they are not speaking

c.      Video quality—try readjusting lighting or screen angle, turn off video if it can’t be solved

d.      Disconnection—wait a reasonable amount of time for participant to reconnect. Ask partner to call them to determine the problem. Switch devices if necessary. Adjust speaking time so as not to penalize for the dropped connection. Pick up where the speech was dropped.

IF YOU ENCOUNTER ANY QUESTIONS PLEASE CONTACT THE TOURNAMENT DIRECTOR