© ASI - Klagenfurt University

European Academic Software Awared

How are winners determined?

To the Homepage| To EASA| To WISL| To EDF| Addresses and Contacts

INDEX:

The evaluation process
Tasks of jurors


The evaluation process:

Winners of the European Academic Software Award 1996 will be determined in a three-stage process:

1. Stage

Jurors classify the entries roughly by general principles of value, software quality, innovative aspects etc. In this process, they install and run the software and study the entry form and the short manual submitted with the program. For this first classification, the jurors use an evaluation form and give reasons for their decision. Each software will be evaluated by at least two jurors. Software that is classified as interesting goes on to the second step of evaluation.

Approximately 100 programs are allowed to go on to the next step. The submissions' catalogue on WWW shows which programs are still in the competition. The others will receive, individually, the results of the first evaluation as a feedback to their work, but only after the conclusion of the competition.

2. Stage

The second step of evaluation consists in an expertise from domain experts who test and evaluate the contents of the software and its interest for its specific domain area. Domain experts will use all the material submitted: the program, the short and the full manual. They will use guidelines and answer questions and give a written statement. In case of educational software, they will have to invite students to co-evaluate the program. On the basis of this expert review and the students' evaluation, the jurors decide on the finalists who will be invited to Klagenfurt.

Approximately 35 finalists will be chosen. Again, they will appear on the web server, but will also be invited individually. At the finals in Klagenfurt, they will have the opportunity to present their software to the jurors and the public in a 2-days exhibition accompanied by parallel presentation sessions.

Authors of programs that are among the 100 most interesting entries and reviewed by domain experts will receive this written review, again only after the conclusion of the competition.

3. Stage

At the finals, the jurors meet to review once again the finalist programs and come to a decision on the award winning programs. Award winning authors receive a trophy, a certificate as well as prizes in money and kind.

Awards

There are 10 possible award categories:

However, the jury can decide, during the evaluation process, to leave out one award category and/or to split up another instead. This depends on the quality and the number of entries in each category.


Tasks of jurors

Jurors have to accompany and control the whole evaluation process, from November '95 through March '96. Their tasks are to

1. download 7-10 appointed programs of their discipline area, install and run them in the first stage of evaluation, fill in and send the (WWW) evaluation form.

2. coordinate the decision on which programs are to go on in the competition with the other jurors of their discipline group (each group consists of at least 4 jurors).

3. help finding and choosing domain experts for the programs that are selected for further evaluation in their discipline.

4. study the reviews of the domain experts and discuss, in the discipline group, which programs should go to the finals.

5. determine, together with the other discipline groups, the number of finalists from each discipline group, the total number of finalists and the award categories.

6. Speakers of juror gourp will participate in the finals (Klagenfurt, May 30 - June 1, 1996), and especially in the jurors' sessions.