Evaluation of IYS Student Competition entries

A great many interesting and creative entries were received for the International Year of Sound (IYS) Student Competition.

The students of primary schools were asked to produce drawings inspired by the motto of IYS 2020 “Importance of Sound for Society and the World” and, possibly, by melody and refrain of the song “The Sound of The World”. Students of high schools were asked to write a stanza of 4 verses (lines) in their mother tongue and/or in English, inspired by the melody and the refrain of the song “The Sound of The World” as well as by the motto of IYS 2020 “Importance of Sound for Society and the World”.

Determining the top entries was not easy and a careful process of evaluation was essential to ensure a fair outcome. This process is described here.

Until 30 April, participants sent their contributions to the national representatives for their country. These representatives selected the three best items for each competition category and forwarded the three national finalists (awarded as national winners) to the IYS Competition Office by 31 May.

Between 15 June and 15 July, the evaluation of the finalist items was carried out by both an expert jury (composed of the IYS steering committee) and an online web jury.

For each item of each category, experts assigned a score between 1 and 5 on each of the following three questions:

1. Is the material relevant to the theme of the IYS Competition (The sound of the world)?
2. Is the material original?
3. Does the material inspire any emotion, feeling, awareness?

The average score given by each expert, answering the three questions (score 1-5 points each), was calculated. The experts were excluded from giving a score to any entries from their home country.

For the voting of the web jury, all items were collected in two different facebook albums uploaded on the official IYS facebook page and users were invited to ‘like’ their favorite items.

Regarding the overall calculation procedure:

• For each category (I and II) and for each jury (expert and web) items were sorted from the most preferred to the least preferred, from the highest (1st) to the lowest (39th for drawings, 33rd for stanzas)
• A decreasing sequential score from 39 (33) points to 1 point was assigned to each item in each category
• A weighting (70% expert jury votes and 30% web jury votes) was applied
• Final Scores were calculated as a weighted combination of expert and web jury scores
• On the basis of the final scores, the Steering Committee will make the decision and assign awards and special mentions

Winners will be officially announced by 15 September.

In the meantime, the IYS Competition Office is also working to realize a short movie (video of the song) and a long one which will summarize the story of the International Year of Sound and its global initiatives, particularly focusing on the Student Competition.