| Authors: | F. Adnan Akyuz, Guy Hokanson, Tanya Lynn Akyuz |
| Volume: | Volume 2020, No. 1, 9 Jan 2020 |
| DOI: | http://www.doi.org/10.46275/JOASC.2020.01.001 |
| Abstract: | Science Olympiad events are annually conducted competitions that cover a variety of science disciplines spanning biology, earth science, chemistry, physics, engineering, and technology. Each event addresses the knowledge of science concepts, as well as the application of these concepts, along with the necessary process skills to participate in the National Science Olympiad Tournament at the end of May of each year. In 2019, the meteorology event was conducted in Division B (Middle Schools). Fifty questions were prepared before the events in the North Dakota state competition to cover topics ranging from the Earth’s modern atmosphere to weather forecasting and temperature indices. The North Dakota Meteorology event facilitators used the Turning Technologies’ student response system to automate the scoring to minimize manual grading error and to eliminate any ties in score consistently for all competitors. Breaking multiple ties by manual grading is a difficult task considering that the scores need to be turned in as soon as the tests end. Additionally, the Olympic rules do not allow any ties and ask the event facilitators to turn in the score sheets with each team awarded unique scores. In other words, the facilitators are expected to come up with their own way to resolve the ties, leading to inconsistencies in methodologies among the events. This paper focuses on breaking ties based on the difficulty level of a question in such a way that the more difficult the question is, the more points are awarded for the team in an automated fashion. The authors believe that the method described here is a simple but useful method that will save the facilitators time and provide an error-free, and most importantly a consistent grading system that is designed to eliminate the tie of scores among the competing teams. Furthermore, the tie-breaking methodology described in this paper and the publicly available score sheet, which could be adapted for use even if one does not have Turning Points technology, have the potential to lead to more consistent scoring in any of the Science Olympiad events across the country. |
| Link: | https://stateclimate.org/pdfs/journal-articles/2020_1-Akyuz.pdf |
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