On any event day, a lot happens before the first match begins. Fields are set up, volunteers check in, Referees review the game, and Judges get ready for their first team interviews. Behind every match and every award is a group of people making decisions all day long. Just as a teacher prepares a classroom before students arrive, preparing volunteers ahead of time helps the whole day run more smoothly.

Our goal is to support a cohesive, consistent, student-centered experience for everyone at every event. The Competition Courses in PD+ were shaped by our own time at competitions, by the Global Robotics and Science Foundation, and by feedback from Event Partners, including at the Event Partner Forum this summer. In this article, I'll share what connects the courses and who each one is for.

A Shared Foundation

The Student-Centered Policy opens with a simple idea: Learning is everything. Winning is a goal. Have fun. Students do the work, and students explain the work. Those principles start at practices and team meetings and carry through every part of a competition day. Every Competition Course is grounded in the Student-Centered Policy and the Code of Conduct, so each volunteer understands how their role helps keep the work in students' hands.

A Familiar Format for a New Audience

If you've taken a PD+ course before, the Competition Courses will feel familiar. Like other PD+ courses, they are self-paced, so you can work through them on your own schedule. Each chapter builds on the one before it, with Check Your Understanding questions along the way. When you finish, you can access your certificates on your VEX PD+ Dashboard and share them as needed.

Each course is built around specific roles and responsibilities volunteers take on during the season, and the courses fall into three main categories.

Build your skills with the Event Partner Certification Course

The Event Day Builder shows you what's involved in the day. The Event Partner Certification Course gives you the context, skills, and knowledge to actually do it. It is designed to support both new Event Partners and veteran hosts, and it has two parts. First, you prepare to host local qualifying events. 

The local event chapters walk through the full arc of hosting:

• Event fundamentals and your commitments as an Event Partner
• How match play fits into the event day
• The supporting activities that happen around matches
• Planning your venue, budget, staffing, and schedule, with the Event Day Builder as a hands-on planning tool
• Posting and running the event, and your responsibilities afterward

Completing those chapters and the certification exam earns you Event Partner certification, so you can post and host events on events.vex.com.

Advanced Event Partner Certificate

Once you're certified to host local events, the subsequent chapters build on that foundation for larger-scale Spotlight, Signature, and Championship events. Local event certification is the prerequisite, and completing the advanced chapters earns the Advanced Event Partner Certificate.

Refereeing and Scorekeeping

V5 Override and IQ Level Up Referee Certification Courses

Every match depends on Referees who watch the field carefully, understand how scoring works, and apply the same standards from one match to the next. There's a game-specific course for each program this season: V5 Override and IQ Level Up.

Head Referee certification will be familiar to many volunteers. It continues to be required for anyone serving as Head Referee, and it prepares them to make the final calls in a match and communicate those decisions clearly to teams.

The Scorekeeper Referee certification is new this season. It isn't required, but it gives Scorekeeper Referees the same foundation as the Head Referee they work alongside, so the whole referee team arrives with a shared understanding of the game. In a couple of hours, a new volunteer can learn exactly what they're signing up for, which takes some on-the-spot training off the Head Referee's and Event Partner's plates. For teams, it means every interaction with the referee team reflects the same expectations. When Referees explain their calls directly to the drive team, students understand the decision and can learn from it. And when every Referee shares the same understanding of the game, teams can trust that a match is scored the same way at every event they attend throughout the season.

Judging

Judges Certification Course

Match results show what a robot can do, but they can't show the decisions students made or what they learned along the way. That's the story Judges uncover through Engineering Notebooks and team interviews. The Judges Certification Course prepares Judges and Judge Advisors to apply the rubric criteria fairly, consistently, and confidently at every event.

Judge Advisors will recognize their certification as a continuation of the training they've completed in past seasons. It remains required for anyone leading a judging team, and it prepares Judge Advisors to orient Judges and schedule judging activities from start to finish.

New this season, the Judge certification is a recommended starting point for anyone joining a judging team. It introduces the rubric criteria for Engineering Notebooks and team interviews so Judges can spend event day actively listening to students instead of learning the process as they go. That gives the Judge Advisor a team that's ready from the first interview, and gives Event Partners an easy way to prepare volunteers ahead of time. Teams benefit too: no matter which Judges they talk with, their work is considered through the same lens.

Many Judges are not teachers, and talking with students about their work can feel unfamiliar at first. As we built this course, I kept thinking about what my own teaching experience brings to a judging conversation: knowing what to expect from students, and how to help them share what they know. We worked to bring that perspective into the course, so Judges who have never stood in front of a classroom can walk into an interview ready to listen. That preparation is at the heart of student-centered judging. As the course puts it, what matters is "whether the work stayed in the students' hands." The goal of judging is not to catch teams doing something wrong. It is to recognize and celebrate what students have learned and built.

Where to Go from Here

Behind every student-centered event is a team of prepared people. You don't need to take on everything at once. Start with the step that fits your role:

• Thinking about hosting? Explore the Event Day Builder, then take the Event Partner Certification Course.
• Already an Event Partner? Share the Competition Courses with your volunteers, and encourage them to take the courses recommended for their roles.
• Refereeing or judging? Take the course for your role: V5 Referee, IQ Referee, or Judges.
• Coaching a team? Bring the Student-Centered Policy and Code of Conduct into your practices and team meetings, and point interested volunteers to the courses.

Completing the Head Referee or Judge Advisor certification also unlocks a role category in the PD+ Community. Learn more about Accessing the Role Categories in the PD+ Community.