Judging Rounds/Periods
Andrew Busuttil avatar
Written by Andrew Busuttil
Updated over a week ago

Judging Rounds/Periods

Judging Rounds are also called Judging Periods and for the purposes of this article and subsequent articles they can be referred to interchangeably.

To setup your judging round navigate to the contest being configured and select the settings tab then go to the “Voting and Judging” subsection. You will have the option to add a new Voting Period or Judging Period. Select “Add Judging Period”.

Once you’ve added a judging period you will be taken to the create round menu form.

Name your round and give instructions on how you want it to be judged, E.g. how to score entries.

Score Type

Next your round will need a score type. There are three options.

  • Rating: basic rating system based on a scaled number of stars to score against all entries.

  • Assessment Rating: This allows you to create scaled star ratings across multiple assessment criteria.

  • Ranking: basic ranking system that allows you to order entries from best to worst.

Score Calculation

ContestPad allows the choice of setting how scores are calculated for all judges. There are three options available:

  • Sum: gathers the scores from all judges for a specific entry and adds them together.

  • Average: gathers all the scores for an entry from all judges and calculates the average score provided by all judges.

  • Average (only scores greater than zero): Same as the Average option, however only entries with a score greater than 0 will be considered in the average calculation.

While in this menu you can also decide to enable or disable judges’ comments. This allows judges to provide their comments against each entry.

Score submission

By default at the end of the judging round scores are automatically submitted and finalised. However there are a few override options to this behaviour for the judging type of Rating and Assessment Rating.

The option, “enable judges to submit scores manually” allows judges to submit their finalised scores for each entry individually.

When enabled a “Submit Score” button will appear under each entry to allow for the entry score to be submitted individually.

Note that when a score is submitted individually, the score for the submitted entry can no longer be changed by the judge and the entry will also disappear from the judges gallery view. Entries that are not submitted individually will still be automatically submitted at the end of the round depending on the setting of the next option.

Next is the option to “Include scores if not completed by due date”. This determines whether a scores will be automatically submitted at the end of the Round if not all remaining entries have been scored. If this option is enabled, then scores will be automatically submitted even if not all entries have been scored. If this is option is disabled, then if not all entries have been scored by the due date then NONE of the scores will be submitted.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If the “Enable Judges to Submit Score Manually” is enabled and entry scores have been submitted individually, the entry scores for the manually submitted entries will be accepted regardless of the “Include scores if not completed by due date” setting. Only entries that have not been individually submitted by the judge will be assessed based on the “Include scores if not completed by due date” setting.

Judging Schedule

Choose a date and time for the start and end of the judging period. It is important to note that at the end of the judging period scores will be submitted automatically (depending on “Include scores if not completed by Due Date” setting).

Assigning judges

You can assign both judging groups and individual judging users to a round.

Assigning individual judges is used when you only want to assign an entry to a single judge. This means the entries will only be scored by one judge.

Assigning judging group allows for the same entries to be assigned to multiple judges within the group.

To assign judges go to the setting “Judges Assigned to this Round”. Here you can can select one or more judging groups to assign to the round. You can also assign individual judges to a round by selecting the “Select individual User” button.

Selecting this will let you choose one or multiple users to be a judge.

Assigning Entries

Once the round is configured you can then begin assigning entries to judges.

The assignment screen displays all judges on the left and all entries on the right. It also has two main filters at the top left to display all entries as well as unassigned entries.

There are two ways to assign entries.

Using the Assign To button:

Firstly it is recommended that you select the Unassigned filter on the left. This will show all entries that have not been assigned to judges. Then select entries in the entries tab by using the left mouse button. You may select multiple entries at once by selecting one entry, holding the <shift> key and then selecting the last entry in the selected range. All entries will then be selected in between.

Next select the “Assign To” drop down in the top right above the filters. Just select the judge or judges group from the “Assign To” drop-down and the entries will then be assigned to that group or judge.

Drag and drop:

This can be done by selecting the entry that you wish to assign (left mouse button) then while holding the mouse button drag and drop it into the judge or judge group and it will automatically save.

Finally, you can now start the round and the judging round. When you start the judging round all judges will receive an email with a link to the judging portal.

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