Making Your Decision

After the round ends, it's time to make your decision. This is often the hardest part—you've just heard 30-40 minutes of arguments, and now you need to figure out who won. The Decision Wizard is here to help.

How the decision works

When you complete the final speech, the decision wizard takes you through four steps:

1. Review - what happened in the round, and what you made of it at the time
2. Issues - tick the few arguments the round came down to
3. Each issue - decide the ones you ticked, one at a time, in your own words
4. Decision - the winner, your reasoning, and speaker points

Analysis compilation

The moment you press Complete Round, the analysis starts running on our servers. You'll see a loading screen with the four steps and a tick as each one finishes.

Expect a couple of minutes. During that time we're tracking each argument through the round, finding what went unanswered, pairing every argument with the responses it received, and preparing the review you decide from.

Go grab some water. You've earned it. For what each step produces, and what to do if one of them stalls, see After the Round.

Step 1: What you marked while the round was running

The wizard opens on your own record, before any of ours. For each team you'll see how much of each speech you said you could follow, whether the summary and final focus told you why to vote and compared the wins, the arguments you flagged as strong, weak, key or confusing, and the notes you typed.

It decides nothing. It is the only version of your thinking that cannot have been shaped by the analysis, so it is worth reading before you start.

Step 2: What did the round come down to?

Click Next and you reach the shortlist. It lists the arguments still alive at the end of the round and asks you to tick the ones your decision rests on.

Two or three is the normal answer. A Public Forum decision rests on a couple of arguments, and the rest are points you heard and set aside.

Up to three rows are ticked when you arrive - the ones nobody answered, and the ones both sides argued and said why they mattered. Every box is yours to change. Changed your mind about the whole set? Back to the suggestion puts the first one back.

Each row says what happened to that argument in one word - Unanswered, Contested, No weighing, Too late - with a line explaining it, such as "Con never answered this". Those are facts about the speeches, not verdicts.

You decide only what you tick. Everything you leave is still recorded as heard, and still reaches the students in their feedback.

Voting Issues goes through each word and what to do when nothing survived to the final focus.

Step 3: Deciding each issue

One screen per argument you ticked, in the order they were argued.

Understanding each voting issue

Each issue is one argument and everything that happened to it:

• The argument itself - the claim, the reason it was true, and why it mattered, as the team put it
• What the other side did - Answered, Turned, Rebuilt, Weighed or New argument, and how strongly
• What its own side did with it - developed it in the summary and final focus, mentioned it in passing, or dropped it
• Whether anyone weighed it against the rest of the round

An argument first raised in the final focus is marked as such, with the note that most judges will not vote on something the other side never had a chance to answer.

Making your decision

You pick a winner for each issue and say why in your own words. "Neither side clearly won this" is a real choice - some issues genuinely wash, and saying so is better than inventing a winner.

There's no judgment here—use what helps you. Some judges like to start with our analysis and modify it. Others write from scratch. Both are fine.

Step 4: Who won the round

After you've gone through every issue you ticked, it's time to make your final decision.

See the big picture

You'll see how your own issues fell - which ones each team won, and which ones didn't factor - then pick the round winner and write your reason.

The same Compare with the analysis button sits under the reason box, greyed out until you have picked a winner and written something.

Two more buttons sit at the top of this step. How judges are asked to decide gives you the three rules: decide on the arguments actually made, credit only what you could follow, and set aside anything new in the final focus. Full argument flow opens the whole round as one chart - the same one on the round's details page, described in AI Analysis.

Speaker points

At this point, you'll also assign speaker points for each debater, on the 25-30 scale in half points.

For each speaker you get a suggested number and the factors behind it: how complete their arguments were, whether their extensions added reasoning or repeated a title, how much of the other side they answered, and whether they weighed. It never reads how anyone sounded.

Enter the speaker points for each debater, then click Complete Decision.

What happens next

After you complete your decision, you'll be taken to the feedback page where you can:

• Generate educational feedback using the 3 C's method
• Review and edit your RFD
• Prepare your ballot for submission

See our Feedback Guide for details on that step.

What's next?

Now that you know how to make your decision, learn about:

Next Steps:

• Generating Feedback - Create helpful feedback for teams using the 3 C's method
• Tabroom Integration - Export your ballot and submit to Tabroom

Related Resources:

• Voting Issues - What you see on each issue, and why our read stays hidden until you decide
• Speaker Points - The 25-30 scale, the rubric, and where the suggestion comes from
• After the Round - What runs between Complete Round and this screen
• Understanding AI Analysis - How the analysis pairs arguments with their answers and tracks them through the round
• Recording Your Round - How your post-speech ratings inform speaker points
• Workflow Overview - See how decision-making fits into the complete judging process

Help & Support:

• Quick Reference - The checklist to print, and where to look things up mid-round
• FAQ - Common questions about making decisions
• Troubleshooting - Fix issues during the decision process