Team Interview Rubric for a VEX AIR Drone Competition

The VEX AIR Team Interview Rubric is the tool judges use to score team interviews at a VEX AIR Drone Competition event. This article explains what the rubric listens for and how it is organized, and provides both letter and A4 sizes for download. It is written for students, coaches, and judges.

For the awards the interview supports, see VEX AIR Drone Competition Award Descriptions.

Definitions of the terms used here are maintained in the central glossary.

Team Interview Rubric

This is the official rubric that judges use to evaluate teams during the interview at a VEX AIR event. Download a PDF below to get started.

VEX AIR Team Interview Rubric – Letter Size

VEX AIR Team Interview Rubric – A4 Size

What the Interview Is For

A team interview is a conversation where judges hear the story of a team's season directly from the students who lived it: the flight plans and code they developed, the problems they solved, and what they learned along the way.

It is not a presentation or a quiz. A memorized speech, however polished, will not score well, because the rubric rewards what judges hear in genuine conversation: specific accounts of the team's own work, backed by decisions, test results, sources, and moments from the season. Students may refer to their Mission Notebook during the interview if it is available, the way engineers refer to their own documentation. No one student has to explain everything; different students on the team can speak to different parts.

Note: The standard for whose work the interview describes comes from the Student-Centered Policy. Read that policy for the full picture of what it means for work to belong to the students.

How the Rubric Is Organized

The rubric has two sections and six criteria.

• Explain Your Learning (6 points) — whether students can explain their own work, trace how they got there (including what did not work), and show how they know their flight plan, code, or strategy works.
• How You Worked with Others (6 points) — whether students learned from and with each other, made decisions together, and made outside ideas their own by crediting, adapting, testing, and understanding them.

Each criterion is scored on what judges hear during the conversation: Heard, with Specifics (2 points), Heard (1 point), or Not Yet Heard (0 points), for a total of 12 points. Under each criterion, the rubric lists examples of the kinds of evidence that count. Judges do not need to hear all of them; hearing any one of them counts. Each section also offers sample questions that judges can choose from to guide the conversation.

Respect and courtesy are not a scored category, because the Code of Conduct makes them an expectation of participation for every team.

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