2024 Team Leader’s Report: Karen Jillings

1. ​I was very impressed with how well the entire event was organised, particularly given the huge number of participants and the various intricate stages involved from putting together the question papers and answers, getting everyone's input and agreement, and then ironing out any disagreements collegially.  As an academic, but of the Humanities rather than the fundamental sciences, I was fascinated by the way in which even the smallest details were debated in terms of the different formulae that could be used and the calculations that ought (not) be awarded points.  It was a very detailed and intricate points system for every single question. I found the process so good because it was extremely fair and equitable, and clearly done in the best interests of all the students taking part. There was some disagreement about some aspects, but by and large everyone was very collegial and compromised to find solutions.

2. For the team leaders it is certainly far from a holiday (not that I expected it to be!). We had several days where we worked from 8am to 1am the next morning because of the various steps involved in checking and putting together the exam papers for each of our students.  It was interesting to see that these were anonymised yet personalised - so each student was (for example) NZL-S-01, 02, etc. I think the intention was to ensure fairness and also that every student had an exam paper that was targeted to their requirements in terms of native language and so on (I think in some teams several languages were used by different members). We just used English, which I am assuming suited our students this time around, but in future it may be worth asking if another language (eg Mandarin) may suit them better (should any of the future participants be Chinese, for example).

3. The moderation process was fascinating and I am so glad that I was encouraged by several team leaders to participate in it. I was successful in securing extra points for all three of our students, despite my lack of knowledge of the subject material.  Sometimes marks had simply not been added up correctly (understandable given that the markers were grading thousands of sections of answers over the course of the competition!), while on other occasions it was possible to argue for extra points for the method a student had used even if their final answer had been incorrect.

4. I realise that as a 'new' participating team NZ could only send three students and one team leader. In future years if it may be possible I think it would definitely be a good idea to send two team leaders, or one team leader and an observer.  The only difference is that the observer cannot vote at any of the IBMs - but they take part in the same way in every other aspect including discussions.  From next year there will be a participation fee for each team, which was decided at last year's IOAA.  I think it will be 600 Euro per team broadly speaking, with a scale depending on previous participation and team size. It will be held in Mumbai from 9-19 (I think) August, with expressions of interest in attending opening in January.

5. At first I worried that my lack of expertise in physics and astronomy would be a hindrance to my role as team leader, and I felt out of my depth and honestly quite surprised that the organisers had said that it would be fine for me to lead the team.  As the competition progressed, however, I quickly realised I was less out of place than I had first feared.  Some of the other leaders, it turned out, were also not scientists themselves, though most were (either high school teachers or university lecturers/researchers, or undergrad/postgrad university students). In fact, one of the Swiss team leaders was also a medieval historian, like myself! She did however have a co-leader who was a student of astrophysics and therefore had a good knowledge of the subject. It honestly did not matter that I could not particularly contribute to the discussion on the first few days, when all of the questions and answers were being discussed.  As is often the case in such big meetings of 100+ people, only certain participants really contributed and it ended up that perhaps 15% of attendees actually spoke. So the fact that I didn't did not matter. In any case, I still was able to use my judgement on practical matters we had to vote on, such as what percentage of marks to allocate to a particular section of the exam given the work involved. 

Similarly, the marking was not so bad as I had imagined given that we were provided with a detailed marking scheme for each question.  Additionally, I got some great help from some very friendly team leaders who checked my own marking in aspects that I simply did not have the expertise to mark sufficiently.  I would consider it an honour to be the NZ team leader in the future, and having participated this year I feel I have a good understanding of expectations for future IOAAs.  Having said that, I would strongly advise that NZ sends an additional team leader/observer if possible, one who has greater knowledge of physics and astronomy.  This would ensure they can confidently mark our team's answers without feeling we have to rely on help from other team leaders.  In any case, I would be very happy to provide consultation and advice nearer the time of the next IOAA even if I don't actually attend it.

6. I would strongly advise that if at all possible the members of a future NZ team get together several times before the competition takes place, as this will significantly help with team building and friendship forming.  It is totally understandable that this didn't happen so much this year, especially with Andrew living in the UK, but even meeting online would be good so participants can get to know each other beforehand.  It was quite striking how many of the other teams were really cohesive as they had clearly been attending for several years, some as students and subsequently in team leader or observer roles, and others as team leaders for almost every year in a few cases! Clearly many of the teams had done a high level of advance preparation for the competition, through days of going through previous exam papers and so on, and had a real feel for each team member's individual strengths and knowledge. If it would be at all possible, I'd highly recommend this in future.  I heard that one of the high performing teams even employed a sports psychologist - though I don't think there's a need to go that far!!