NSDA Campus and Tabroom Best Practices and Troubleshooting

RULES AND BEST PRACTICES FOR ONLINE COMPETITION

Rules

1.     A reasonable amount of time should be allotted to solve unexpected technical issues. If issues cannot be resolved within a reasonable amount of time, as determined by the judge, consult the Tournament Director regarding work-around solutions. Judges should be flexible in dealing with the online technology during the debate.

2.     Electronic communication is limited to those participants in the round. Communicating with outside individuals is not allowed. A judge, with evidence of outside communication, should adjudicate the round as normal and bring the issue to the attention of the tournament director at the conclusion of the round.

3.     Video and audio quality may vary. Students should not be penalized for poor quality transmissions unless those transmission make it impossible for full participation in the round. If full participation is not possible the judge should bring that to the attention of the tournament director.

Best practices

1.     Coaches should have a way to contact all competitors on their team during the tournament.

2.     Partners should have contact numbers for each other

3.     Students are allowed to use multiple screens and/or devices during the debate.

4.     All non-essential programs/apps should be shut down so as not to interfere with the debate video conferencing.

5.     Electronic communication between partners, outside of speech time, is best handled via cell phone calls.

6.     Debaters should always mute themselves when it is not their speech time.

7.     Judges should always mute themselves during debater speech time.

8.     Although it is the responsibility of the judge to keep time, each speaker should have the ability to keep their own speaking time and prep time.

TECH FAQ FOR TABROOM AND CAMPUS ISSUES

There are two pieces of software that we use when competing at a tournament.

1.               Tabroom.com—this is the program that will publish the schematics and results. It is also where judges get their ballots.  You will check here for your rounds.

2.               NSDA Campus—this is the video part of competition. When you click the icon next to your round it takes you to an NSDA Campus room where you compete. The program Campus uses to run the video conferencing is called Jitsi Meet. Don’t get confused if you see references to this. Jitsi meet is a part of Campus but some devices need to download this program separately in order to make NSDA Campus work.

NOTE: The first thing you should do with most tech issues is to shut down and restart your computer. If that doesn't fix the issue then follow this guide.

TABROOM ACCESS ISSUES

If you do not have a tabroom.com account check out this link regarding how to set one up.  https://docs.tabroom.com/Sign_Up

Can’t access tabroom

           Do you have a tabroom account?

If not, go to www.tabroom.com and sign up for an account. Be sure to keep track of the email you use. Let your coach know you set up an account and pass the email you used on to them to link it to the school account.

           Are you using the correct email for the account?

Be sure there are not two accounts with your name using two different emails. Ask the coach to check the school roster to see what email you used in the past. There might be a duplicate entry on the roster with different emails. You coach may have entered you under one you are not using. The coach can fix this by "de-duplicating" the entries.

I can access tabroom but not seeing any tournament specific info or schematics?

           Are you using the correct tabroom account? Could you possibly have another account?

Be sure there are not two accounts with your name using two different emails. Ask the coach to check the school roster to see what email you used in the past. There might be a duplicate entry on the roster with different emails. You coach may have entered you under one you are not using. The coach can fix this by "de-duplicating" the entries.

           Is your account linked to the school account?

Ask the coach if there is an email listed for you on the school roster. If not, have the coach link you with the email that you are using on your tabroom account.

           Are you using the same email the coach has on their roster?

Have the coach check the roster in tabroom. What is the email they have listed for you? Make sure it is the same one you are using for your tabroom account.

NSDA CAMPUS ISSUES

NOTE: Be sure you are completely logged out and close your Zoom so the camera and microphone don't compete w/NSDA Campus.

I can’t access any Campus rooms

            Are you using a Chrome browser?

Chrome is the only browser that Campus works with, so please download the Chrome browser.

Is your Chrome browser up to date?

To check, click the three dots in the right corner of your toolbar at the top. On the drop down menu choose "help" then click "about Chrome".

I don’t see a video icon

           Has the round been published by the tournament?

If it has not, be patient. If it has you should make sure you are logged into the correct tabroom acct with the correct email (see other questions). Once you are logged in click on your email in the upper right corner you should find a dashboard with your round listed and the video icon.

I can get into the Campus room but no one can see or hear me

           Have you given Campus access to your camera and microphone?

On the top of your Chrome browser next to the URL is a little lock. Click that then check the appropriate boxes so you can give the program access to your microphone and camera.

           Are you on a computer that might be controlled by a school or business?

The computer may have restrictions on what it can access. You would have to go to the administrator that has control of the computer to get them to fix it. Have the admin check out this link https://www.speechanddebate.org/campus-tech/

You might need to move off your wifi and access Campus over your phone. Be sure to take your phone off the wifi at your location. If you have an iPhone you may need to download an app called Jitsi Meet, this is the background program for Campus.

            Are you at school?

If you are at school there may be an existing firewall that prevents you from accessing Campus. You will have to go to the IT department to get them to change settings. Ask your IT people to go to this link to try and fix it  https://www.speechanddebate.org/campus-tech/

           Has your IT department been made aware of the network requirements for Campus?

If not then send them to this link for the settings needed to access Campus. https://www.speechanddebate.org/campus-tech/

I keep getting kicked out or I lose signal from the Campus room

           What resolution are you using for video in Campus?

It might be too high. On Campus go to the right side of the toolbar where there are three dots, click them. There is setting about "manage video quality" you can decrease that to "standard" or "low" but do not go the lowest setting.

           Are you close to a router?

The closer you are to the source of the wifi the better your connection will be. If you are really close you could get an ethernet cord and connect directly to the router and bypass the wifi.

           Is anyone at your home doing something that would use up a lot of bandwidth?

For example: playing video games, downloading large files, streaming music or movies etc.

If so, please ask them to stop.

Is your video quality set at HD?

It might be too high. On Campus go to the right side of the toolbar where there are three dots, click them. There is a setting about "manage video quality" you can decrease that to "standard" or "low" but do not go to the lowest setting.

I have an iPhone/iPad and I can’t access Campus

           Have you downloaded Jitsi Meet?

If not, go to the Apple store and download the program. It is necessary to run Campus on some Apple products.

 I am in my round and my video keeps breaking up but I am still connected

            Check your resolution. At the bottom of the Campus screen is the toolbar with the microphone and video icons. The right side are three dots, click those. Look for "manually adjust video quality". If you are at HD you can lower it to standard or low. Do not go all the way to the left, it will shut down your video.

            Ask the other contestants to shut down their video to boost the signal for you.

            Move closer to your router so you get a better signal.

            You might need to move off your wifi and access Campus over your phone. Be sure to take your phone off the wifi at your location. If you have an iPhone you may need to download an app called Jitsi Meet, this is the background program for Campus.

ACCESSING NSDA CAMPUS WHEN COMPETITING FROM SCHOOL

To test if Campus REALLY works here is what you should and should not do:

DON’T:

1)     Don’t rely on the Campus test room. This is good to determine basic access, but you won’t know if you can see or hear unless you have multiple people if the same test room. You may think it works because you can access the test room but you may not be able to see and hear others.

2)     The same problem occurs if you go to a squad room at the beginning of a tournament—squad rooms are different than competition rooms.

DO:

1)     Test by going to: campus.speechanddebate.org

2)     Where it says “enable test rooms” type in a unique name for a room you want everyone to try. It must be minimum 8 characters.

3)     Give that name and web address to everyone to try.

4)     Everyone should do this at the same time—but remember you only get two minutes in the room at a time—you can go back in after it kicks you out of the test room. But each session is only two minutes.

5)     If you can see and hear everyone in this test room, you will be OK.

6)     If you cannot see and hear everyone, then there are problems, most likely with the firewall on your WIFI.

DO, CHECK WITH YOUR IT DEPARTMENT:

1)     Give your IT department the information listed at https://www.speechanddebate.org/nsda-campus/    Look for the question “What do I need to tell my IT department….?

2)     There is a line which says “It is possible that Campus may eventually use other UDP ports between 10000 – 20000, so if you want to be proactive, ask your IT department to open a wider range than just 10000.” This is the case—they are now using SOME of these ports. Most IT departments will not open 10,000 ports. So here are some possible work arounds:

a.     Open just port 10,000 and try again—but as NSDA Campus progresses they may have to open more ports so this is not a certainty that it will continue to work. Here is a line from NSDA on that port “They need to open port 10000 to all IP addresses (0.0.0.0/0), and they need to enable peer-to-peer connections, the test the "Test Competition Room."

b.     Have IT just open those ports during your competition hours.

c.      If that doesn’t work here is more from NSDA “If it works during the tests and doesn't work during the weekend, the only explanation is that the school IT folk made a mistake of some kind. They could have only whitelisted a handful of IP addresses they saw during the test instead of opening it to the world, they could have accidentally closed the ports, they could have used TCP ports instead of UDP ports, they could have an upstream router controlled by someone else at the district that they don't know about and aren't accounting for on the weekends, they could have device-level filtering they forgot about, etc. (all real examples from this year). All I can say is that when the ports and domains are truly and actually unblocked we have a 100% success rate with it working, but dozens of examples this year of school IT promising they did it right only to come back and say "oops we forgot X."