Social Psychology with Jeff

Last weekend, I was one of the first people to be head of an online TOC-bid qualifying tournament in Student Congress (the 2020 Jack Howe Memorial Tournament). Much of my summer was spent determining how to make this tournament work and what Roz Foster (my co-head of Tabulation) and I wanted it to look like. Many aspects worked as expected. Some were adapted for the best interest of the students. And some should be revisited for the future–both for online tournaments and for in-person tournaments when they will return.

First, a note: students are amazing and can succeed when given the chance. Much of what we learned was because students are resourceful and adaptive and want to do good in the world. Roz’s and my guiding principle is to have an environment where the most students can succeed in having an informative and meaningful experience, and I hope we accomplished that goal last weekend. If we did, it was because of the dedication of the students to try and make it work, and the coaches and judges who allowed us to run this tournament. Thank you.

With that, here is what we learned from running Student Congress at the 2020 Jack Howe Touranment:

What worked (that Roz and I developed)?

1. Having a judge training/meeting for the start of prelims, semifinals, and finals. Many norms change between congress tournament or regions. Having a meeting to go over norms helps create consistency between judges and parliamentarians at a specific tournament.
2. A low-bandwidth option for student congress. Other events will have 11 people in the room at most. Student Congress can have up to 21 people in a single chamber. Yes, we can have 10-person rooms, but a meaningful minority of students still had bandwidth issues with 15 simultaneous webcams turned on. Having the low-bandwidth option allowed for a more competitive room, a better learning experience overall, and a better use of resources throughout the round. We had the following norms in place:
   1. If internet connection was good for all participants, the students and Parliamentarian’s webcams stayed on while the judges had theirs off.
   2. If internet connection was not good for all participants (e.g., competitors, judges, or the Parliamentarian), the Parliamentarian could call for the “low bandwidth” option. In this case, students would keep their webcam off unless if they were speaking or the presiding officer. Students would turn their webcams on to be recognized as a speaker for a question, speech, or motion (note: the students came up with this idea). Webcams would be on for the start and end of the session.
      We probably used the low bandwidth option more often than not while still keeping the integrity of the rounds intact.
3. Chamber sizes for prelims should be capped at 12 students. Prior norms used to be chamber sizes of about 15 students. With online technology, having chamber sizes between eight and 12 entries for prelims is a good size to get most students active within the session. Given the option between smaller chamber sizes in prelims or combining rooms, I believe that prelim chambers should not be larger than 12 students.
4. Elim chambers can be as large as 16 students. My biggest personal challenge was looking at the break from semifinals to finals. Our numbers necessitated four semifinal rooms of 12 students each. If we stuck with the norm of a cap of 12 students per chamber, that would have meant we advanced three students per semifinal room. That would have been rough, and it did not sit well with me for weeks–especially with our tournament being a top-6 bid tournament. After consulting with Chris Palmer and Aaron Hardy, we found the low-bandwidth option as something that could have potential. After our final round, and after some informal feedback from the participants in the room, I think this is a viable option for elimination rounds.
5. Have a separate judge pool for Congress. We were able to keep close to schedule because of a congress-only judge pool.
6. Have a manual ranking system for all judges in the congress pool to see how they would work as a parliamentarian. We used an A-B-C-D system where:
   1. As were “Excellent Parliamentarian,”
   2. Bs were “Would trust in a prelim round as is,”
   3. Cs were “would trust if trained by the tournament,” and
   4. Ds were “would not trust as a Parliamentarian.” This allowed us to identify 16 usable Parliamentarians, with 12 of them used in prelims.
7. Making the judge requirements high enough to allow for each judge to get one round off in prelims. It reduced judge screen time and allowed for us to try and remain on schedule.
8. Use full names for codes. It is really hard to identify students if the code for students is anything except full names with online tournaments.
9. Have a Discord Server or Slack Channel for Tab Communication Across the Tournament.

What worked (that the students or judges created or identified)?

1. Having the option to not use a preset precedence list. Being a presiding officer is a leadership position, and having the option to determine how to lead is an important skill to develop. The tournament provided a preset precedence list for each room and round. However, we told the students: “if you choose, you can have your own system. There is no penality for using the preset precedence list, but we want you to make what you think is the best decision for your chamber.”
   Many chambers used the preset precedence list for prelims. Many others did not. We did not notice a meaningful difference between rounds that did or did not use preset precedence.
2. Turning on the webcam to be recognized as a speaker. It is simple, effective, and reduces bandwidth within the round.
3. Have students manually change their names to either their first and last name or Sen/Rep last name. Both would allow students to be identified more easily than their code names.

What are concerns for future tournaments based on what we learned this weekend?

1. I would scheduled 75 minutes for ballot entry and two hours between semifinals and finals. Compared to other events, it is hard to enter congress ballots/critique sheets while watching the round online. It used to be with paper ballots that your comments occurred during the speech and the ranks occurred at the end. Now, many judges are entering comments on paper and having to transfer them to the ballots after the round. If we expect judge time to be the same as they were in-person, comments will be reduced. Some coaches have reached out to us and have said as much.
2. I would have 75 minutes scheduled between the end of the final round and awards. Yes, that is so much time–especially because we are used to turning ballots around within 20 minutes at an in-person tournament. However, many judges need that time to enter critiques and ballots, and those ballots may offer the most important feedback for the students.
3. If time is an issue, I would teach judges how to watch the round on a smaller device (e.g., phone) and enter critiques on a larger device (e.g., laptop). That can speed up the process of entering ballots if needed.

I am sure there are other takeaways, and message me if you think of any other ones or want to discuss what we learned from this tournament.