Design Award - LINK TO RUBRIC
The Design Award is based off team engineering notebooks and interview with the judges. The interview will take place at a time separate from STEM Project judging. A top scoring design notebook will include:
- Identify the challenge(s) - Describes the challenge at the start of each design process iteration with words and pictures, and states the team's’ goals for accomplishing that challenge
- Brainstorm Solutions - Lists 3 or more possible approaches to the challenge with labeled diagrams
- Select the best approach and plan - Explains why the selected approach was chosen and why the other alternatives were not chosen. Fully describes the plan
- Build, Program and Test - Records the building, programming and test processes and the test results in such detail that someone outside the team could recreate the robot by following the steps in the notebook
- Repeat process steps, if needed - Contains a complete history of the design process iterations for the season that resulted in the current robot design, repeating the steps above for each iteration
- Complete and organized document of Robot Design Process - Contains Project and Team Assignments, Entries from team meetings, with goals, decisions and accomplishments, and recorders’ names or initials and dates. Indexed so that anyone can easily locate any needed information
- Team demonstrates effective management of skills, time, and material resources - Includes an overall project timeline against which progress is checked regularly as well as daily goals and accomplishments. Documents the assignments of each team member based on skills and availability.
3 bonus points for a bound notebook!
Team Design Notebooks vs Team Journals - LINK TO ARTICLE
The Engineering Notebook is intended to be the place where teams document their design process. The format of the notebook is discussed below. The Engineering Notebook is the document that the Judges use to evaluate teams for the Design Award. A Team Journal is where a team tells the story about itself to others.
Engineering notebooks over the big ideas addressed above but they also include smaller details as well:
Engineering notebooks over the big ideas addressed above but they also include smaller details as well:
- bound quad-ruled notebook is the preferred format
- never edited
- team # on the cover
- written in ink with errors crossed out using a single line; NEVER remove a page
- pages numbered, dated, and signed/initialed by student
- a table of contents
- team meeting notes as they relate to the design process
- design concepts and sketches
- pictures
- notes from competitions regarding observations that should be considered in the next iteration of their design
- team members’ observations and thoughts on their design
- team organization practices as they relate to their design process
- any other documentation that a team finds useful as related to their robots design
- notes on the robot’s computer code
- how the code is designed to interact with the robot’s mechanical systems to create an overall integrated system
- placement of sensors for software feedback systems and algorithms used for the control of the robot should be clearly documented
- computer code or CAD drawings should be glued or taped into the notebook
Other Helpful Resources
- KIWIBOTS Webpage on Engineering Notebooks
- YouTube Video - "The Officialish Guide To An Awesometacular Vex Design Notebook" by VEXRoboticsTeam4184G
- Google Drive Folder of resources I have compiled
- Sample VEX IQ Engineering Notebook from 2016 World's Competition
- 2017 Fort Mill VEX IQ Workshop Breakout Session Presentation