Poorly Run Event Stories

[hmmm]

I guess my team isn't alone in this experience.

It's a sadly common experience.

Dynamic Planet at Socal States 2015 used the same exact exam as Orange Country Regionals that year, which was especially problematic since OC sent 6 teams to States.

whats even sadder is that waqua div b this year at nats reused the nats test from 2012.

[Birdmusic]

whats even sadder is that waqua div b this year at nats reused the nats test from 2012.

Yikes. What’s the point of nats (or any competition) if they’re just going to reuse a test?

Why doesn’t scioly have a rule against copying past tests/ large portions of past tests?

[Things2do]

whats even sadder is that waqua div b this year at nats reused the nats test from 2012.

Yikes. What’s the point of nats (or any competition) if they’re just going to reuse a test?

Why doesn’t scioly have a rule against copying past tests/ large portions of past tests?

Just outta curiosity, how would you enforce that rule, without using a lot of time and such? Maybe for Nationals, and maybe State. But, beyond that, even with O.C.R. software, you're talking a lot of work for only so much gain...

[Umaroth]

whats even sadder is that waqua div b this year at nats reused the nats test from 2012.

Yikes. What’s the point of nats (or any competition) if they’re just going to reuse a test?

Why doesn’t scioly have a rule against copying past tests/ large portions of past tests?

Just outta curiosity, how would you enforce that rule, without using a lot of time and such? Maybe for Nationals, and maybe State. But, beyond that, even with O.C.R. software, you're talking a lot of work for only so much gain...

Nationals should definitely have more of a test quality control. What happened in Water Quality B is disappointing. Our students worked so hard only to find out that there was a good chance that some other teams did better than them simply because we had forgotten to purchase the division c nationals pack from 2012.

[EastStroudsburg13]

Yikes. What’s the point of nats (or any competition) if they’re just going to reuse a test?

Why doesn’t scioly have a rule against copying past tests/ large portions of past tests?

Just outta curiosity, how would you enforce that rule, without using a lot of time and such? Maybe for Nationals, and maybe State. But, beyond that, even with O.C.R. software, you're talking a lot of work for only so much gain...

Nationals should definitely have more of a test quality control. What happened in Water Quality B is disappointing. Our students worked so hard only to find out that there was a good chance that some other teams did better than them simply because we had forgotten to purchase the division c nationals pack from 2012.

Agreed 100%. The lack of any major quality control effort by NSO, especially at the national level, continues to be disappointing.

[sciolyperson1]

Yikes. What’s the point of nats (or any competition) if they’re just going to reuse a test?

Why doesn’t scioly have a rule against copying past tests/ large portions of past tests?

Just outta curiosity, how would you enforce that rule, without using a lot of time and such? Maybe for Nationals, and maybe State. But, beyond that, even with O.C.R. software, you're talking a lot of work for only so much gain...

Nationals should definitely have more of a test quality control. What happened in Water Quality B is disappointing. Our students worked so hard only to find out that there was a good chance that some other teams did better than them simply because we had forgotten to purchase the division c nationals pack from 2012.

100% agree - any event shouldn't depend on someone taking the test x days ago. However, you still have to give credit to those who took the test - not that many people put in the effort to take all the tests and use all the resources given to them...

[dxu46]

whats even sadder is that waqua div b this year at nats reused the nats test from 2012.

Yikes. What’s the point of nats (or any competition) if they’re just going to reuse a test?

Why doesn’t scioly have a rule against copying past tests/ large portions of past tests?

Just outta curiosity, how would you enforce that rule, without using a lot of time and such? Maybe for Nationals, and maybe State. But, beyond that, even with O.C.R. software, you're talking a lot of work for only so much gain...

This year in my English class, our teacher used a website called turnitin.com that we used to submit essays/etc. One of its features is checking for similarity in other documents in its database to prevent plagiarism (it works, once a classmate partially plagiarized a poem and got 68% similarity). This could possibly work with national tests, and a rule could be enforced that if a submitted test passes X% on the similarity percent it can't be used at a national competition. I know that in a lot of events, most tests include some basic "gimme" questions that a good test can't avoid having, which is why the similarity limit can be set higher.

[PW240.3]

Yikes. What’s the point of nats (or any competition) if they’re just going to reuse a test?

Why doesn’t scioly have a rule against copying past tests/ large portions of past tests?

Just outta curiosity, how would you enforce that rule, without using a lot of time and such? Maybe for Nationals, and maybe State. But, beyond that, even with O.C.R. software, you're talking a lot of work for only so much gain...

Nationals should definitely have more of a test quality control. What happened in Water Quality B is disappointing. Our students worked so hard only to find out that there was a good chance that some other teams did better than them simply because we had forgotten to purchase the division c nationals pack from 2012.

I agree. As a person who did well in water quality B at nats, I can say a huge part of the test basically took no thinking because of the repeated questions. Sadly we were expecting this and thus took literally every test in our bank (I don't think we did C nats 2012 but I'm sure some other test copied off that), which is a big reason I think we did well at nats. Also, the water quality device testing was horribly run. There was no washing station but there were calibration solutions, meaning the test solution got contaminated whenever a team used a calibration solution. Unluckily we were one of the last teams to use it so our device was practically guesswork. I'm not sure but I think the same person has been running it for several years which makes this even worse. The specimens were ok but 2 were extremely small and they were in translucent capsules filled with water which made the microscopes practically useless and the specimens basically guesswork too.

[sciolyperson1]

As a person who did well in water quality B at nats

You're from Div B, Texas - did you win? If so, congrats!

[PW240.3]

As a person who did well in water quality B at nats

You're from Div B, Texas - did you win? If so, congrats!

Lol yeah I won thanks. Was pretty surprised