SCORING ATA TRUCK DRIVING CHAMPIONSHIPS WITH BUBBLESCAN
• Simple to Use • Accurate Data • Announce Results in Minutes
(Photo: Flickr/Road Kill Maneuver By Jenni Reynolds-Kebler)
SCORING ATA TRUCK DRIVING CHAMPIONSHIPS WITH BUBBLESCAN
- Simple to Use
- Accurate Data
- Announce Results in Minutes
(Photo: Flickr/Road Kill Maneuver By Jenni Reynolds-Kebler)
What do we (BubbleScan) provide?
- A customized scoring spreadsheet
- PDF for the Written Test, Pre-Trip and Skills Course, pre-filled with driver details and machine-readable ID
- Phone and On-line support before, during and if necessary after the TDC.
What do you (the customer) need?
- A document scanner. There are many good scanners available. If you don’t already have one, we currently recommend the Epson Workforce ES-500.
- A PC with Excel 2010 or newer.
- A printer to print the reports.
What happens BEFORE the TDC?
Before the TDC, you need to send us a list of the drivers, including their name, driver ID, class, employer, email, and whether they are a Rookie or not. This is usually provided in form of an Excel file.
We will then overlay the score sheet templates with the driver details and send you a print-read PDF (one for each event) with an individual score sheet for each driver. When printing the score sheets yourself, please make sure to print at 100% of the original size. In Adobe Reader this will be called ‘Actual Size’ or ‘Page Scaling: None’.
Also, it’s useful to run through the entire process prior to the actual event. We gladly accommodate that through an online screen share and conference call. Because every scanner works a little differently, it will be important to know if any settings (most likely brightness) need to be adjusted to ensure a quality scanned image.
At the TDC: Add / Delete / Change Drivers
At the heart of our scoring solution is the scoring spreadsheet. When we send it to you it will have all the drivers in it. Our scoring spreadsheet consists of multiple worksheets and macro routines. Macros are usually executed by clicking a button on the worksheet. Edits to the driver list are done in the MASTER worksheet.
- Here you can delete a driver by placing the cursor anywhere in the row of the driver and clicking on the ‘Clear Selected Record’ button.
- To change a name, class, employer, Rookie designation, or ID simply type the correct information in the respective cell. Make sure to use consistent spelling. To the spreadsheet “FedEx” and “Fed Ex” (notice the extra space!) are two different things.
- To add a driver, simply type in that driver’s information at the end of the list and then click the button labeled “Post”. A new driver with a new driver ID will not have prefilled score cards. Simply use a blank score card, bubble-in the ID and write the other driver information (name and class) by hand onto the card.
At the TDC: Scanning Score Sheets
The initial setup consists of the following steps:
- Start the BubbleScan OMR Software
- Click the blue START button and follow the prompts. You will be asked to open the custom Excel spreadsheet we provided, specify a directory for the scanned images, and connect to the scanner.
- Make sure to select Column Format: 15
Once this is setup, you are ready to scan:
- Place the score cards (in any order) into the scanner’s input tray. It is important that you try and remove any bent corners and excessive creases and that you keep the guides of the input tray tight so that the paper doesn’t skew very much during the scanning process.
- If the scanner menu provided by the scanner manufacturer (e.g. Epson, Canon, Xerox, HP, …) isn’t already displayed, click on “Start Scanning”. It is here where you can make adjustments to the scan settings. Make sure you are scanning Black & White, 200 dpi. The most common other setting is to change the brightness, aka threshold, of the scanned image thereby producing a darker (or lighter) image. Click “Scan” (or whatever your scanner’s manufacturer called this button) and the forms in the input tray will scan.
- Each scanned page becomes one new line in the RECORDS worksheet. If there are errors or questionable data fields the respective fields will be highlighted in red and the row will otherwise not have any color. If the data passes the verification test, the data row will take on the color of the respective event.
At the TDC: Reviewing and Correcting Scanned Data
In the ATA scoring spreadsheet we highlight the following errors:
- Scan Errors – these are errors where the BubbleScan OMR software was unable to properly read the form. You should try and remove the cause for this and rescan. Possible causes are bent corners, excessive skewing, upside down scanning, writing, markings, smudges in between timing marks (the black rectangles on either side of the page). Wet paper (due to rain) can also be unscannable. In this case, use the respective button for ‘Manual Data Entry’ and enter the data in by hand.
- ID numbers that don’t match an entry in the Master worksheet.
- Double-marks – when more than one scores was given.
- No marks for fields that should have a mark. Such fields include all fields on the Written Test form, score fields on all forms and those demerits that have an option of 0 (zero) demerits.
To fix the latter three errors, simply look at the scanned form (either the paper form or the image, which is accessible by clicking on the link in the 3rd column) and manually correct the error. When drivers gave no answers on the written test, those should be marked with a “-“ or “X” – anything that is clearly not a correct answer, but places a value into the cell.
NEVER edit the spreadsheet when the OMR software is writing data into the spreadsheet.
When you have reviewed and edited the scanned data, click the button. This will write the data into the Master worksheet and also update the dashboard on top of the Records worksheet. The dashboard shows how many score sheets have been recorded for each class and each event.
At the TDC: Generating Summary Reports
Reports are generated on one of the three Report worksheets (tabs at the bottom of the Excel spreadsheet).
- To generate (and then later print) the summary reports, go to the Summary Reports worksheet and click on the respective button for the report you want to generate. We can customize the reports to your requirements, including using your particular formula to determine the Grand Champion.
- Team Reports prints a summary of how the driver scores for each company (employer).