2021 River Hill Division C Invitational (Free!)

[sAkEtH]

Hello everyone!

We at River Hill High in MD are super excited to announce that we will be hosting a new Division C MiniSO Invitational on the week of February 28th to March 6th. This competition will be completely free with no registration fees.
We will be having 19 events with 2 trial events (Fast Facts and Game On). We will host a maximum of 80 teams with a cap of 2 teams per school.

All tests will be written by experienced Division C competitors and Science Olympiad alumni from across the country.

If you're interested, please visit our website at https://rhsoi.github.io/ for more details and register at https://scilympiad.com/md-rhsoi. Registration will be determined on first-come, first-serve.
Note: If we receive more than 80 sign-ups within the first 2 weeks of registration, priority will be given to MD, VA, PA, and NJ teams


If you have any other questions, please email rhsoinvite@gmail.com or shoot me a message on the forums or on Discord.

We're also looking for experienced event supervisors in the following events: Chem Lab, Circuit Lab, Experimental Data & Analysis, Fossils, and Protein Modeling. If you're interested, please email rhsoinvite@gmail.com or shoot me a message on the forums or on Discord.

We hope that you will join us at the first-ever River Hill Science Olympiad Invitational (RHSOI)!

Sincerely,
2020-2021 River Hill Science Olympiad Invitational Executive Committee
Saketh Sundar, Jeffrey Li, Victoria Cheng

[sAkEtH]

This is a great opportunity! Hopefully many teams sign up.

[sAkEtH]

quick update for RHSOI , if you haven't already dmed me and are interested in writing or grading for our competition, please apply here: http://bit.ly/2Yi9trd

[sAkEtH]

Update: We just released our ES list, it can be found here: https://rhsoi.github.io/eventsupervisors/ ! We're still looking for test writers in Circuit Lab and Experiment & Data Analysis, please reach out to me on Discord/forums or email us if you're interested.

[13lade88]

Hi there everyone! While, unfortunately, RHSOI is no longer accepting event supervisors, for those who are interested in helping, we are currently recruiting GRADERS for Anat, Circuits, DG, DyPlan, Orni, and Sounds! We offer service hours, and by volunteering to grade you would be helping us advance a good cause. If you're interested, please fill out this Google Form!!! Thank you!!! https://forms.gle/M2UR5cXehUELo6Y56

[sAkEtH]

Full results can be found here!: https://duosmium.org/results/2021-02-28 ... tational_c
Awards can be watched here!:
https://youtu.be/HwJSKs1Hb4o
Congrats to everyone who participated!

Thank you so much to all the coaches, competitors, and our awesome event supervisors for making this happen! We had a blast putting this together and we hope everyone had a great experience! RHSOI 2022

[13lade88]

Designer Genes Review
Hey, everyone! Since nobody's posted test reviews here yet, I'll be the first. I was the event supervisor for Designer Genes for this invitational, and I had a total blast! First, though, I'd like to thank Saketh for reaching out and giving me the opportunity to write for this tournament. I said during awards that this was one of my favorite tournaments that I volunteered for this season, and I meant it. It's been a blast getting to talk to the other ESes, and it really gave me a chance to sharpen my test-writing skills. That being said, I definitely still have some ways I could improve which I'll discuss further into the review.

The Review
This test was a little on the shorter side, with only 73 questions. However, it more than makes up for it with a sprawling 53 question FiB and short answer section -- only 20 questions on this test are multiple answer or true/false. This kept teams working the entire time, and was a point of complaint for some. However, I think it's important to remember that Science Olympiad tests should be held to a different standard than tests you take in school. When it comes to writing a Science Olympiad test, you don't want teams to finish. The goal isn't for everyone to get a perfect score, it's to separate the top teams from the bottom teams. This can be done in a lot of different ways depending on your approach to test writing, and I personally think that long short answer sections do a perfectly fine job of separating teams. Short answer questions let you achieve a higher level of thinking that you can't exactly get with multiple choice, which distinguishes between teams better than basic recall MCQs about obscure topics. I would rather take a basic topic to a higher level in a short answer question than ask a basic question about something silly and obscure, you know what I mean? Anyways, this review is getting a little away from me -- that's why the short answer section was so long. Look, graphs!



I'm really pleased with how the histogram/distribution look for this test. The high score was around 88%, which is pretty impressive (though a little too high from the perspective of a test author). A handful of teams managed to put an answer for all the questions, but a majority of teams couldn't make it to the end which is fine! I'm really pleased that everyone gave it their all at this test, and I can only hope that if you took this test you learned something from it.

Conclusion
While the test hasn't been released yet, you can find it on my userpage once it is. The release version shouldn't be too much different from the Scilympiad version that was run at the competition, with maybe one or two questions altered for clarity. The major feedback that I received aside from my test being too long was that some of the questions were unclear, which is something that I struggle with a lot while writing. In the future, I plan to do a more thorough job of proofreading my tests before competitions in hopes of catching questions that could be worded better. Test writing is hard, y'all. If you have any more specific feedback, feel free to reach out to me here on the forums through a private message, or through a direct message on Discord (spinch#4931). Thanks for reading!

also happy 100th post to meeee!

[Ninn]

Hi y’all -- I was the event supervisor for Protein Modeling at RHSOI. Protein Modeling is a fun event to write for and I'm glad I got another chance to run it before this season ends. Thank you to the tournament directors for their work on this invitational as well, things were very organized and it was great working with y'all : )

Test Review
I like writing harder questions with more time to think, and the test and results reflected this: the majority of teams were able to finish the test and the high score was just above 60%. The score distribution leans further left than intended. In hindsight, giving a handful of easier questions might have evened this out. The Jmol section was meant to be a more straightforward way to obtain points, but there were a good number of residue and ion identification questions that lots of teams were unable to answer. Many of the teams that scored in the 20-30 point range either did not know how to use Jmol and/or did not attempt the Jmol questions at all.



Teams generally knew their content but struggled with application: few teams were able to identify that lysine's positive charge allowed it to interact with negative DNA, or knew to look for the PAM sequence in my final CRISPR question. Be sure to read carefully as well -- almost half of teams answered with the primary/secondary/tertiary structure of proteins in response to the question that asked for those structures for RNA.

This test was by no means perfect and I appreciate everyone’s feedback. I had several teams mention Jmol being repetitive, and I agree, the section was definitely less application-based than I wanted. More variety for all the sections would have been nice; in hindsight, the Biochemistry section would have benefitted from more short-answer questions (maybe some Ramachandran questions too) and the CRISPR-Cas section from a greater quantity of easier questions. While I won’t be able to write for this event again in the near future, I’ll definitely keep this feedback in mind in case I get the chance to do so again : ).

Conclusion
If anyone has feedback or questions, feel free to reach out through Discord (Nin#6104). Thank you to RHSOI for letting me write for Protein Modeling and to participants for competing, good luck at future competitions everyone!