Team Registration Numbers Discussion

[Unome]

Most of you are probably aware that team registration decreased substantially in 2021. This was expected, of course - with the effects of Covid and virtual tournaments, many schools with less established and/or competitive SO programs didn't register. There's an extent to which SO teams at many of the lower-ranked schools (and some higher-ranked schools...) continue year-by-year largely through inertia, and a year without SO for them is likely to substantially cut into their likelihood of returning - especially considering that it's unlikely that 2022 will see a full recovery in terms of proportion of in-person tournaments or in-person schooling. I'm posting this thread as a place to discuss local strategies to help bring back schools that didn't register last year, and to improve registration in general.

[Kylari04]

I doubt that numbers will recover until in-person tournaments are resumed. I think this is a commonality that a lot of academic programs are facing (e.g. Science Bowl, Speech and Debate, etc.), and it's to be expected since online does not fully capture the in-person format. However, I would think that it would be helpful to try and be more inclusive of building events. A lot of builders lost out on the 2021 season since only a handful of tournaments had build events, and if this happens again in 2022, then I would bet that these people would feel left out again.

[Unome]

I doubt that numbers will recover until in-person tournaments are resumed. I think this is a commonality that a lot of academic programs are facing (e.g. Science Bowl, Speech and Debate, etc.), and it's to be expected since online does not fully capture the in-person format. However, I would think that it would be helpful to try and be more inclusive of building events. A lot of builders lost out on the 2021 season since only a handful of tournaments had build events, and if this happens again in 2022, then I would bet that these people would feel left out again.

My concern isn't about whether numbers will recover in 2021, but about whether they will recover in future years without a long uphill battle.

[sneepity]

I doubt that numbers will recover until in-person tournaments are resumed. I think this is a commonality that a lot of academic programs are facing (e.g. Science Bowl, Speech and Debate, etc.), and it's to be expected since online does not fully capture the in-person format. However, I would think that it would be helpful to try and be more inclusive of building events. A lot of builders lost out on the 2021 season since only a handful of tournaments had build events, and if this happens again in 2022, then I would bet that these people would feel left out again.

My concern isn't about whether numbers will recover in 2021, but about whether they will recover in future years without a long uphill battle.

Unfortunately I think it would probably take a few years, I'm saying 2-3 for most schools that didn't register to start coming back (meaning the schools with a lot of issues doing scio could start coming back in 2-3 years). The reason why I say this is because a few reasons, being loss of interest, less funding that goes to the clubs as whole, and even also the difficulty to actually conduct a team and participate consistently. Looking back, the online format was tough to adjust to (STAR program just made it all worse), some schools did not fund their clubs as much or they didn't fund their less significant clubs (a lot of money was going to the adjustments needed because of the pandemic), and some schools just did not have as many students opt in to join the clubs. I think fixing this is depending on each individual school, really. The schools would have to direct their funding accordingly after the pandemic and they would also have to try to gather interest in students. Scioly can though try to urge schools to get their scioly clubs started up again, especially if there initially was little participation in the school's club. How this can be done I don't have great suggestions for 😕 it's up to the schools/teachers how they advertise a club. What I can think of though, is reaching out to local school science departments and explaining to them how having this club can bring benefits. 🙂 This could even be students taking the initiative and going to their supervisors. Feel free to critique anything I said !!

[EastStroudsburg13]

It's probably going to be up to the individual state and regional directors to reach out to schools once in-person tournaments are starting up again. Nearby schools may also be able to help with this, but I'm not sure how effective it would be.

I would like to see some sort of organized recruitment push from NSO once conditions are right to do so, but I somewhat doubt the likelihood of that.

[knightmoves]

It's not clear to me how fast schools are going to turn all their extracurriculars back on. As we know, most of the traditionally-competitive schools kept going, but a lot of the rest didn't (especially at the middle school level). I suspect that in those schools, Science Olympiad is no more important than any after-school social club, and it takes rather more buy-in from school authorities to register a school team and to take a school group offsite than it does to have a board games club stay late one afternoon.

[sneepity]

It's probably going to be up to the individual state and regional directors to reach out to schools once in-person tournaments are starting up again. Nearby schools may also be able to help with this, but I'm not sure how effective it would be.

I would like to see some sort of organized recruitment push from NSO once conditions are right to do so, but I somewhat doubt the likelihood of that.

I doubt it too, but I think it's possible If the state directors encourage schools, it's very likely with support that schools will start up again. Also, another idea I had was a "guide" on how to start up scioly at school. I feel like introducing students to scioly and engaging them will pique their interest, and they can consider talking with their schools and starting the team themselves.. with adults of course. I've quite a lot of clubs (ex: a student voter registration club and science national honor society) post these guides on their websites to help people who want to start up their clubs, and I feel something like this would be beneficial with scioly, since it has so many things to know.

With nearby schools helping and word of mouth by participants themselves also seems like a good idea, but it can get things out of hand. NSO won't have any control whatsoever on how students communicate about the club, so it's better to keep it official Imo.

[RiverWalker88]

The google trends searches of "science olympiad" are fairly interesting. There is a really obvious wave trend, dropping in the summer, increasing at the season start, and spiking at state time... until 2021, where it hardly goes up.

Source: https://trends.google.com/trends/explor ... 20olympiad